Looking at the development of the market from the sales situation of the printing presses in the United States

According to statistics from the US NPES, the sales of printing presses in the first half of this year are positive, but it is estimated that this will decrease in the second half of this year and the first half of next year. The reason is that many users are waiting for the DRUPA exhibition held in Germany in May 2000.
Recently, NPES has made a comprehensive survey of the printing press market under the title of “The Current Situation and Future of the US Printing Machine Market”. This survey focused on print data for all printing methods, which also covered paper product processing, packaging, and commercial printing. Based on these data, it is inferred that by 2005, the development status of offset presses, flexo presses, gravure presses and letterpress presses.
The survey found that flexographic printing has developed very rapidly. It accounts for more than 60% of the packaging and printing industry, with an annual output value of 34 billion US dollars.
The development of gravure printing has benefited from the digitized workflow. At least 90% of the gravure prints were printed by laser engraving. At present, color jobs requiring high quality of packaging and printing still use gravure printing.
The survey also found the following issues:
1. The typography market will tilt towards copiers, and digital output systems and two-color small presses will replace monochromatic printers;
2. Digital press sales will continue to grow steadily;
3. Sheetfed printers (36-42in) will be favored by more commercial printers;
4. With the ever-increasing growth of magazines, catalogues, and interleaf printing, sales of heatset web offset presses are also increasing;
5. When a printing factory purchases equipment, the first thing to consider is whether the company's economic situation is stable and whether it has the ability to provide technical support and training.
Double-sided printing is becoming more and more popular, especially in the area of ​​large-format printing. For many printing companies, printing on both sides at once can improve their market competition. According to NPES's investigation and development, 75% of the six-color and seven-color sheet-fed printing presses currently sold have a double-sided printing turnover device, and the printing press can be increased to 10 printing units according to user needs.
These fast, high-volume presses can reduce printing costs in many areas of printing. Multi-color double-sided printing is mostly used in large-format (50-in) printing, especially in the field of publication printing. These large-scale printing presses also have certain advantages in the field of packaging and printing. They can compete with the gravure web offset printing for long-lived products.
What kind of jobs will be printed in the future? It is estimated that from now until 2005, the printing of trademarks, packaging, inserts, catalogs, cheques, direct mail-order advertisements, and identification documents will increase significantly; people's directories, guidelines, periodicals, newspapers, product literature Printing of products such as brochures and business forms will show a downward trend during this period.
During the period from 1997 to 2007, the demand for multicolor printers will drop by 22%, while multicolor sheetfed printers will show an upward trend. Small format (23in or smaller) presses will increase by 27%.
In general, after the turn of the century, the printing and publishing industries will emerge as winners, regardless of productivity, prices, product quality, and future services. (Summer compilation)
Excerpted from "Printing Equipment and Equipment"