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It is impossible to tell the future but you can get close using specialised market research to paint a likely picture. Here, Chris Springford pulls together the evidence for the next few years of digital colour markets.
 Figure 1. Western Europe: digital colour printing markets (€ million) by end use sector from 2002/03 to 2007/08.
- Digital colour printing will continue to grow at a much faster rate than conventional printing. The markets want improved digital colour reproduction, print-on-demand, shorter print runs and minimal printed stocks across a wide range of products.
- Personalised printing, one-to-one marketing, customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing strategies that are people-focused will fuel the growth of digital colour printing in Western Europe.
- Digital printing will continue to erode traditional workloads to account for around 13.5 per cent of total print value by 2008.
- To enter the digital printing markets, printers will need to look to their digital workflow systems and skill sets. There is a lot to learn: variable data, database management, e-commerce and integrated fulfilment. Enhanced prepress activities, digital photography, graphic design and digital asset management will all need sharpening to meet the throughput requirements.
- New entrants may not have the baggage of traditional approaches to colour printing: higher staffing with less relevant machinery, used to delivering a lower sales value per head than in exclusively digital printing companies.
- Digital investment will be tempered by companies working smarter to maximise existing investments in presses, adding automatic plate changing, CTP and CIP3 or CIP4 press linkages.
- Digital printers will focus on the shorter run colour demands, CRM, variable data,
- personalisation, transactional printing, digital magazines and newspapers.
- Different costing models will need developing to reflect the shorter life expectancy of digital printing engines. The click charge approach will be attractive to many financial directors.
- Greater connectivity will be needed between administrative and production systems to maximise throughput and gross margins on printing activities. The JDF format will be used extensively in this process.
- Expect the costs of substrates, inks and toners to come down as the digital technology is progressively adopted.
- European legislation on the use of alcohol in printing processes may help to accelerate the migration to digital colour printing.
- Look out for clustering of lower-volume machines to erode some of the workload expected for the higher-volume digital colour engines.
 Figure 2. Western Europe: digital colour printing markets (€ million) by country for 2002/03.  Figure 3. Western Europe: estimated value (€ million) of digital colour paper grades.
Key findings from the Pira survey- Respondents indicated that 70 per cent of their work was four-colour process; 3 per cent involved more than four colours and spot colour, and special colours accounted for 4 per cent of their workload.
- Some 63 per cent predicted that the advent of cluster printing would cause a decline in the need for very high-volume colour printers and the large accompanying investment.
- Some 55 per cent of the respondents thought that the market for high-volume colour printers would still grow.
- On the importance of preprint processes, the ability to receive repro-ready files by email was rated as very important, followed by the need for colour calibration to International Color Consortium (ICC) profiles, expanded data storage and the ability to handle variable data printing.
- The automatic tracking of documents and monitoring of all workflow devices was seen as an advantage, perhaps good news for suppliers of management information systems (MIS) trying to join up printing enterprise information.
- The automatic reprinting of lost or damaged documents was also seen as a distinct advantage.
- The machines perceived to have the greatest growth potential for digital colour were the HP Indigo, the Xerox iGen3 and the Xerox 2060. Next came the DI presses from Heidelberg, Karat and Screen, then the DocuColor series, NexPress and Xeikon.
- Inkjet printing, electrophotography and colour copy press technologies were all seen as being important over the next five years.
- Respondents rated the following functions as important for digital colour printing now and over the next five years:
- Variable data capability;
- Continuous print quality monitoring;
- Improved output resolution;
- Better reprint management;
- Central monitoring and control of all machines in the workflow
In 2002/03 the total digital printing market was worth around €8.4 billion and it represented about 7.4 per cent of the European printing market. This excludes transactional printing and desktop printing. The predictions are that the digital market overall will increase to €11.2 billion (an increase of 33.1 per cent) by 2005/06 and to €13.6 billion by 2007/08 (an increase of 61.1 per cent over the 2002/03 figure). Digital colour printing, using technologies from Xerox, HP Indigo, Xeikon, Scitex, Heidelberg and so on, had a 1.9 per cent share of the total print market in 2002/03 (€2.2 billion), including transactional printing, and this is expected to grow to 2.3 per cent (€3.5 billion) by 2007/08. Networked midrange multifunctional printers push these totals up to over €2.6 billion in 2002/03 and to over €4.0 billion by 2007/08. Geographic markets and forecastsWestern Europe has around 26 per cent of the world market for printed products (Table 2). Digital printing accounts for around 8 per cent of this market share and digital colour printing represents about one-quarter of that, about 2 per cent. Table 3 and Figure 2 show how this breaks down by country.
Estimated volumes and valuesFurther survey results that we do not have space to reproduce here - but which are available in the report - show the value and the percentage share by value of digital colour printing between 1998 and projected through to 2008, broken down by country. Norway has the smallest percentage growth through to 2008, then Sweden. It is at variance with this survey's results, which show that at least to 2005 there is a steadier almost even growth across all the Western European countries. In a survey by MAN Roland, Digital Printing Investment Trends in Europe, the fastest growth rates apply to those machines that offer variable image facilities, whereas those with fixed image facilities show much steadier growth. The use of personalisation in digital colour printing plants in the Netherlands and the UK and Ireland, each of which holds a 25 per cent share of total digital printing production. In the Netherlands the focus is on dry toner solutions and in the UK and Ireland it is on liquid toner processes. Equipment and raw material markets and forecastsDigital colour printing systems have taken significant market share wherever they have been introduced. Indigo, Xeikon and Agfa's Chromapress were the initiators by providing four-colour alternatives to offset litho, and since they were driven digitally, they provided the means to integrate with the digitisation of prepress activities that was happening at the same time. Since their introduction, the printed results have improved in quality, production speeds have increased and unit costs have dropped.
 Table 2. Press costs, historic and forecast
- Xerox 2060s, 6060s, iGen3;
- HP Indigo 6600 and 3000 series (seven-colour presses);
- Océ 700 and VarioPrint 5000 (also seven-colour);
- Heidelberg DI presses (including the Speedmaster DI) and NexPress;
- Dotrix the.factory;
- KBA Karat (waterless litho);
- Dainippon Screen Truepress 544 and 744;
- Komori S40D;
- Ryobi DC233 and 3404DI;
- Scitex Digital Printing Versamark.
In the office market for mid-volume (40-80cpm) digital colour are machines from Canon, Gestetner, Xerox, Toshiba, Minolta, Konica, Toshiba and so on.
With lower capital costs and the possibility of offering clustered configurations, many organisations will think twice about spending €300,000 on one high-speed machine if three or four €30,000-50,000 mid-volume machines would provide a viable solution. The advantage is that if one machine goes down, production is reduced but does not stop entirely.
With digital colour printing, all the time needs to be invested in the prepress department to reduce time on the press. Increasingly, the output device is becoming something of a black box to hold toner and paper stocks, in much the same way as a desktop printer. Fortunately, we are becoming more adept at sending signals to a printing device; we are less good at creative layout, bleed-offs, colour retouching, imposition and all the other traditional printing skills.
 Figure 3. Western Europe: estimated value (€ million) of digital colour paper grades.
Routines for automatic imposition and trapping are also available. All of these tools help to realise our expectations that images will look the same from desktop through proofing to printed job.
At Drupa 2004 there were better versions of the same machines: better resolutions, better quality, less expensive substrates, more personalisation and variable printing options, faster and more accurate outputs, better prepress and post-press materials handling.
Xeikon was an early starter in digital colour printing. Agfa's Chromapress used the same printing engine and both machines can generate 2,000 A4 pages per hour. Xeikon has had a chequered history due to changes in ownership, and after manufacturing over 2,000 digital colour presses worldwide, the factories are now all but mothballed. Xeikon derives its income from sales of toners to provide continuity while Punch, the new owner, develops forward strategies. Digital presses are only built to order.
The growth of the digital colour press markets and the arrival of networked office colour printers mean there will be an increasing demand for cut-sheet A3+ digital papers. According to Pira research, the total demand for digital colour papers splits as approximately 55 per cent inkjet and 45 per cent digital toner substrates. The fragmented nature of the current digital colour printing demand suggests there will be a logistical challenge for paper suppliers in supplying very small quantities of specialist substrates.
Paper for toner printers will become more generic, but quality colour printing will still benefit from tuned papers. For paper suppliers, a digital brand will remain essential. Paper weights are generally in the range of 80-300gsm currently, although some stocks are processed outside this range.
- Digital solutions provide the means to link e-commerce, selling and administrative and production aspects of colour printing businesses, which has historically been very difficult to achieve. As financial institutions come to terms with these developments, more accurate financial models will emerge.
- Digital printing will continue to grow much faster than conventional printing. The main driver in Western Europe will be the ability to provide personalised printing, one-to-one marketing, CRM and marketing strategies that are people-focused.
- The machines seen as having the greatest potential for digital colour growth are the HP Indigo, the Xerox iGen3 and the Xerox 2060. Then, the DI presses from Heidelberg, Karat and Screen, and the DocuColor series, NexPress and Xeikon.
- It is predicted that the overall digital market will increase by 33 per cent to €11.2 billion in 2006, and to €13.6 billion by 2007/08. This reflects an increase of 61.1 per cent since 2002/03.
- Western Europe has approximately 26 per cent of the world printing marketing. Of this, digital printing counts for 8 per cent, and digital colour printing, about one quarter of that.
- Whenever they have been introduced, digital colour printing systems have taken significant market share. This may be in part due to their ability to integrate with the digitisation of prepress, the improved quality of printed results, an increase in production speed and a decrease in unit costs.
- To maximise its capacity, digital colour printing needs time invested on prepress in order to reduce time on the press. The output device is increasingly mirroring a desktop printer as simply a receptacle for toner and paper.
- To realise the expectation that images will be unchanged from desktop to output, much prepress software includes pre-flight checking as standard, PDF file handling, colour calibrating, and routines for automatic imposition and trapping.
- A growing digital colour press market will mean an increased demand for cut-sheet A3+ digital papers.
Chris Springford has written several Pira reports. |
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