Page 12 - Print21 Nov-Dec 2019

Leading Article
Patrick Howard, editor at large.
Look to the future of printing
It’s fair to say the glory days of
print are over. The once dominant communication medium is increasingly sidelined in the digital world of
Facebook, Google and other e-news channels. Newspapers are on the slide, with readers who can’t be bothered to lift their heads from phone and tablet. Magazines are shrinking in size and number as publishers cull the weak and sickly. Even outdoor posters are going electronic, displaying programmed advertisements controlled from a remote server.
From an industry perspective it’s sad,
but it’s nothing new. Television usurped the mantle of the major news channel back in the middle of the last century. Before that, radio brought an unrivalled sense of the immediacy of news into living rooms and motorcars.
Commercial print is slowing too. Paper volumes, the canary in the goldmine, are down, falling by at least five per cent a year for the past decade. Advertising is going online, voting with its budgets to move away from print. Print companies are consolidating and merging – nice euphemisms for closing and being taken over. There are winners and losers here. For many operators printing remains a potent, prosperous industry. The prizes go to the innovative, the determined and the energetic. A generational change is moving through the industry with a new breed of tech-savvy owner operators embracing the new challenges thrown up by the multi- channel media matrix.
Salt of the earth printers
Print is still a huge industry and here to stay, a vital part of the economy, the largest manufacturing employer with thousands
of owner-operated small businesses throughout the length and breadth of the country. Melding design and communication services they’re meeting the requirements of businesses for short-run, on demand digital print. Typically operations with two to three people – rarely more than five – they’re
not talking print as manufacturing but as a service. Whatever you want to print they’ll put up their hands. They’re the customers
of the web-to-print trade printers, a fiercely competitive and highly automated sector.
At the other end of town, the industry is coalescing into a few major players. IVE and Ovato are the two big heatset web printers. Commercial sheetfed operations such as Pegasus in Sydney and Southern Colour in Melbourne, along with a few others, are looking to grow through acquisition. They’ve got the capital backing and the appetite for growth. They’re limited solely by the lack of suitable candidates with sufficient scale to make it worthwhile.
Smaller print companies, mid-size between $5m and $15m annual revenue, are under increasing pressure to diversify, to find new revenue streams. Easier said than done. Packaging is the flavour of the month but it takes more than a press, digital or otherwise, to succeed. Packaging is all about finishing. It requires industrial strength
die cutting, embellishing, and coating.
There are many large, vertically integrated, packaging producers in the field. Printers are finding it’s not an easy escape route from commercial print.
The Gutenberg Parenthesis
If it all seems gloomy, it’s not; it’s just the passing of an era, what is sometimes called
the Gutenberg Parenthesis. Print-based communication has had a good run since
the invention of moveable type in the 15th century. You can’t move on until you recognise what’s gone. There is still a lot of good business to be gained by printers, but only for those who can see clearly and innovate, not for the sentimental or those lamenting a lost age.
I see Bauer is closing People magazine. I worked on the title in the 1980s when it had a weekly print run of 280,000 at its peak. With photo features, puzzles, true crime and short stories, along with busty glamour pin ups that were almost demure by today’s standards, it was the family magazine that Mum could buy for the crosswords and
Dad got the rest. It was worth $20m clear profit a year to Kerry Packer. Now it’s a tatty porn rag, down to 40,000 circulation, but nonetheless a worthwhile print job
for someone, until Christmas. When it’s gone, it’ll never be replaced, which merely emphasises the point – don’t look back. 21
Patrick Howard
— Editor-at-large
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12 Print21 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2019