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PRINT World News—for Leaders in the Global Graphic Communications Industry
NPES and the Graphic Arts Show Company (GASC), the producer of the US-based PRINT show, have developed this free resource for leaders in the global graphic communications industry.
PRINT World News is unique as a worldwide overview report for and about today’s graphic communications industry. Each month it will deliver a summary of key stories addressing vital trends and emerging issues from around the globe.
Ralph J. Nappi, President
Graphic Arts Show Company (GASC) and
NPES – The Association for Suppliers of Printing, Publishing and Converting Technologies
USA
Headlines
Industry News
"Singapore: Cooperation Key to Riding Out Recession"
"France: Print Industry to Be Subsidized as Part of Plan to Encourage Restructuring"
"Trends: A Tiny Door Opens Up to Huge Possibilities"
"Thailand: Magazine Publishers Take to Marketing to Offset Sagging Ad Revenues"
"Sri Lanka: Print Industry Looks to Boost Local Workforce Through Training"
"United States: Printshop of the Future Is 100 Percent Wind Powered"
"Trends: Startup Blends the Best of Both Worlds"
"Taiwan: Homemade 3D Printer Could Prove a Revenue Generator"
"South Africa: Quality Over Quantity"
"Malaysia: Greeting Card Publisher Draws International Crowd"
"Europe: Print Companies Threatened by Withdrawal of Credit Insurance"
Industry News
Singapore: Cooperation Key to Riding Out Recession
A great example of "co-operative" to the benefit of all parties.
When Singapore-based printing company Seng Lee Press was offered a half-million dollar contract from a U.S. publisher to print over 40,000 copies of school textbooks in October, Managing Director Richard Tan chose to bring in the company's competitors rather than turn down the contract or do a rush job of printing all 18 titles. Tan got Grenadier Press, a specialist in color printing; Pixel Tech, which produced the covers for the books; and Wholesome Bookbinding and Bee Chew, which bound the books to cooperate on the project. The strategy proved a success, showing that in a recession, cooperation can be better than competition.
From "Singapore Printers Join Forces"
AsiaOne (01/22/09) Theng, Koh Hui
France: Print Industry to Be Subsidized as Part of Plan to Encourage Restructuring
An enviable example of government and the print industry working together with a long term view.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has proposed several initiatives aimed at bolstering the country's print industry as it restructures to meet current market realities. Under the measures, set to take place next month, the government will boost annual support for newspaper and magazine deliveries from EUR8 million last year to EUR70 million and spend EUR20 million more a year for its advertisements in print publications as well as defer some publications fees. Additionally, a pilot program will be launched to give teenagers a free yearlong subscription to any general news daily of their choice to celebrate their 18th birthday. The government will reimburse relevant publishers under the program. The initiative is aimed at supporting the reading habits of the young in hopes they'll continue with those habits as they become older. All the measures are temporary, stresses Sarkozy, aimed to giving the print industry time to adapt to the realities of new market conditions. "None of the proposed measures ... will be useful in the end if the profession doesn't meet its challenges," he says. "The industry has a future to reinvent. ... Time is running out." The measures are a result of a three-month study of the local print industry's health that was released in early January. The study also calls for newspapers to restructure their finances and training for journalists in multiple forms of media, including the Internet.
From "Sarkozy Offers New Help for French Print Media"
Associated Press (01/23/09) Pirot, Laurent
Trends: A Tiny Door Opens Up to Huge Possibilities
Great opportunities are usually accompanied by great challenges but the printing industry must get here first!
Researchers at DuPont and Cornell University have announced an important step forward in cost-effectively turning carbon nanotubes into transistors, which holds promise for such emerging fields as printable electronics. The researchers' work, published in the January edition of the journal Science, involved treating carbon nanotubes with a fluorine-based solution, turning them from an electronically useless mixture of metallic and semiconducting nanotubes into tubes that were solely semiconducting. These nanotubes were used in an ink used for thin-film transistors, which DuPont hopes will allow for products such as solar panels and flexible electronic displays. The research is at least five years away from being commercialized, according to DuPont research fellow Graciela Blanchet, who has spent a decade working on printable electronics for DuPont. In terms of electron mobility and on/off ratio, the fluorine cycloaddition process has shown better results than past attempts at chemically modifying nanomaterials, said MIT professor Michael Strano. The technology would use conventional printing methods to make thin films of flexible circuits at high volume and low cost, once a commercially viable ink is developed. "Theoretically, the idea is that printing machines are inexpensive compared to semiconducting machinery," says Lawrence Gasman, principal market analyst for industry research group NanoMarkets. "The problem really comes when you start turning some of these things into inks, the performance really comes down." There are about eight or nine companies working on printable semiconducting materials, including DuPont, Bayer, BASF, and Merck.
From "A Tiny Door Opens Up To Huge Possibilities"
Wilmington News Journal (DE) (01/18/09) Eder, Andrew
Thailand: Magazine Publishers Take to Marketing to Offset Sagging Ad Revenues
Seeking to boost their brands and sales volumes in the coming year amid falling advertising sales, Thai magazine publishers are looking to "integrated media services," chiefly promotional events organizing and staging. Magazines in the country see diversification of services as a vital strategy in the current economic and advertising environment. Event organizing and other types of marketing will help bolster brand awareness, according to Inspire Entertainment CEO Wiluck Lohtong. "Our roadshows in many provinces have shown that both sponsors and readers are happy with the result," he says, adding that this is particularly useful for men's magazines, as attractive presenters can attract male readers and sponsors can market products that are hard to market through other channels. Inspire has established a strategic solutions business unit covering event organizing, public relations, studio shooting, and modeling in a single package, and it has proven popular among clients and advertisers so far. While magazine publishers could get by on sales and advertising revenue, says GM Multimedia CEO Pakorn Pongwarapha, new activities are necessary to raise revenue, and the new strategy has received positive feedback from clients, particularly when linked with health, motherhood, and children's magazines.
From "Publishers Turn to Events"
The Nation (Thailand) (01/07/09) Pinijparakarn, Sucheera
Sri Lanka: Print Industry Looks to Boost Local Workforce Through Training
Despite our challenging times a commitment to the next generation of workers is needed to secure our future.
Sri Lanka's printing industry is working to become more professional and train young people as printing technicians via an initiative of the Sri Lanka Association of Printers (SLAP) and the Ceylon German Technical Training Institute (CGTTI). The country's paucity of experienced technicians and the four or five years the training normally takes has meant long waits for repairs at many printers, according to SLAP. Trainees are sent to private sector companies during their training for additional sector-specific training, enabling them to find employment in a particular specialty. Some students nearing completion of their training at CGTTI were chosen for in-house training at leading printing companies in Sri Lanka's Western Province, and were also sent to a basic offset-printing specialty course at the INGRIN Institute. Piyasena Gamage, the country's Minister of Vocational and Technical Training, spoke at a ceremony marking 17 trainees' completion of the new training, during which he stressed the importance of technical training and pointed to the opportunity for advanced technical training via the new Technical University UNIVOTEC.
From "Printing Industry Heading to Becoming Professional"
Daily Mirror (Sri Lanka) (01/05/09)
United States: Printshop of the Future Is 100 Percent Wind Powered
A company that "walks the talk" and sees an employee partnership in dealing with global issues.
The Tucson operations of Arizona Lithographers has become a 100 percent wind-powered facility, helping pioneer this field in the Tucson area. Company owner John Davis, an MBA and a trained mechanical and automotive engineer, decided to invest in the company vision of a more environmental means of powering its operations despite the economic downturn. "Since demand is not high, as yet, there is a financial cost associated with this because we are subsidizing an industry," Davis says. "[But] we all very cognizant of greenhouse gases and global warming and I felt that for the long term our firm needed to position ourselves to reduce our carbon footprint." The company's very high energy requirements made energy an obvious place to focus its efforts, Davis said, and the choice of wind power over solar was due to wind's constant availability. The company is paying more for power requirements now than it did before moving to wind power, Davis says, but "we expect that to diminish in the future, and it is offset by the impact of our carbon footprint on the environment." The commitment to wind power goes beyond the workplace, says Davis. "We are going to carry the program to the extent that we are going to encourage employees to do exactly the same thing the company has, by obtaining wind power offsets for their home use. We'll subsidize our employees by paying part of their credit for wind power service."
From "Printshop of the Future Is 100 Percent Wind Powered"
Inside Tucson Business (AZ) (01/02/09) Youngblood, Sharon
Trends: Startup Blends the Best of Both Worlds
Many commentators are predicting the imminent death of newspapers, but one startup firm is moving into the print-newspaper space with a free newspaper produced from Internet blog posts surrounded by local ads. The Printed Blog is starting up this month as a free weekly in Chicago and San Francisco, but eventually publisher Joshua Karp hopes to put out free neighborhood editions twice a day in many U.S. cities. "We are trying to be the first daily newspaper comprised entirely of blogs and other user-generated content," he says. "There were so many techniques that I've seen working online that maybe I could apply to the print industry." "The free newspaper business model is still very workable," says David Cohen of Silicon Valley Community Newspapers, adding, "There's a huge readership that wants the local news, and local businesses tend to increase their advertising in bad times because they have to capture people's attention." Karp believes he can succeed with a combination of the best print and Web strategies, using blog posts as well as other Web-like content such as reader comments and user-submitted photographs, laid out like a blog instead of like a traditional paper. Eventually, users will be able to visit theprintedblog.com to choose blogs they would like to have in their edition, after which editors will choose the blog posts to put in the paper. The Printed Blog also believes it will be able to avoid many major costs that traditional newspapers incur through such means as putting commercial-grade printers in its distributors' homes so as not to have to pay for centralized printing presses and allowing advertisers to buy ads online so the newspaper will not need so many ad sales employees.
From "Publisher Rethinks the Daily: It's Free and Printed and Has Blogs All Over"
New York Times (01/21/09) Miller, Claire Cain
Taiwan: Homemade 3D Printer Could Prove a Revenue Generator
A place where industrial manufacturing and printing can meet?
Researchers at Taiwan's National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) recently developed a prototype of a 3D printer, or rapid prototyping (RP) machine, that could generate the equivalent of US$10-16 million in revenue in the next five years. The RP technique, which has been transferred to the private firm MicroJet Ltd., could lead to the first commercial RP machine developed in Taiwan, with parts and assembly supplied domestically instead of imported from outside Taiwan. "The RP technique 'prints out' the stereo object by assembling components stack by stack, layer by layer, to the final stereo work," says the university, which expects the machine to be able to print color models in addition to black-and-white ones. The technique is similar to that used in Z Corp. 3D printers, whose technology is derived from ink-jet printing.
From "Taiwan Researchers Develop 3D Printer Prototype"
Cadalyst (01/09) Wong, Kenneth
South Africa: Quality Over Quantity
After a rough 2008 with falling circulation, rising costs, and declining advertising revenues, the print media in South Africa is hoping for a better 2009 as the global economic crunch continues. "There is no doubt that 2008 [was] a difficult year for the print industry as a whole. Even those categories that have reflected growth in circulation have not been able to avoid spiraling input costs," says Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) Vice President Gordon Patterson. Magazines and newspapers are cutting back on marketing budgets and redeploying staff, concentrating on growing their core circulation and finding profit-protecting ways to restrict it. "The growing input cost pressures have resulted in many titles reducing their print runs and thus reducing distribution to those outlets that are economically viable," Patterson said, adding, "From an industry perspective, this year the composition of title circulation will become more important than merely the total." Patterson also hopes for more responsible use of value-adding third-party bulk initiatives, saying, "Currently, this form of circulation is often viewed as a soft way to boost overall circulation performance. PMIE (print media in education) circulation fulfills a critical role in developing the next generation of readers, but there are unsubstantiated suspicions that this could be abused to again boost total circulations. Hopefully this is not the case." The custom magazine category's total circulation now exceeds that of consumer magazines, but it is showing indications of a slowdown as well, as is the growth in free magazine circulation. Meanwhile, as digital media continues to make print media seem outmoded to many, some players in the print industry are hopeful, he says: "As far as rationalization is concerned, we know that one of the main print organizations has publicly stated that their future is in digital media, which makes the future for this publisher a self-fulfilling prophecy. Over time this will happen."
From "Print Media's 2009 Jitters"
Bizcommunity.com (South Africa) (01/12/09) da Silva, Issa Sikiti
Malaysia: Greeting Card Publisher Draws International Crowd
Thinking and acting global with the Internet as a driver absolutely helps print!
Chak Onn Lau is one of the founders of Foldees, an online greeting cards portal based in Malaysia that started operations on June 16, 2008. The Web site invites individuals to submit card designs that visitors can vote on and critique. Two competitions have been held to date, one of them on the theme of "comic book Christmas" and the other on "the game of love" that highlights video games, board games, and so on. The winner of the Christmas competition was graphic designer Mauricio E. Moreno Flores from Mexico, who received an LG 22-inch monitor and US$600; other winners received such prizes as iPods and messenger bags. The Web site, which Chak says targets people ages 13 to 35, has attracted 130 card designs so far. When visitors purchase a Foldees card online, it is printed in Malaysia on paper certified by the International Forest Stewardship Council and mailed directly to the buyer or the recipient. Foldees is primarily publicized through online blogs, forums, and e-mail, and gets about 300 to 500 unique visitors every day. Roughly 70 percent of online sales are by consumers who live outside Malaysia, including Australia, Finland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. About 60 percent of people who submitted designs for the most recent competition were from outside Malaysia.
From "Geeking Up Greeting Cards"
The Nut Graph (01/08/09) Tham, Cindy
Europe: Print Companies Threatened by Withdrawal of Credit Insurance
Understanding how to "manage the business" is as important as printing!
Companies all across the printing sector are being threatened by the possibility of credit insurance being withdrawn by increasingly risk-averse insurance companies—a trend that has included Amlin's withdrawal altogether from the trade credit insurance sector at the end of 2008. Some relatively large printers have moved to cash-on-order instead of ordinary credit terms, according to Nicholas Mockett of Europa Partners, who says, "This could result in substantial cashflow problems and I believe could lead to more firms failing." Malcolm Sinclair of the Scottish paper maker Tullis Russell argued that the credit-insurance tightening has been a disproportionate response overall, saying, "The current situation may prove very damaging and it is ironic that companies who make their money from managing risk seem to be among the most risk-averse." According to credit manager Steve Parkins of Antalis UK, insurance limit reductions are not being cut or withdrawn across the board, but there are some large printing companies having difficulty acquiring coverage.
From "Print Companies Threatened by Withdrawal of Credit Insurance"
PrintWeek (01/16/09) Morris, Helen
Abstract News © Copyright 2009 INFORMATION, INC.
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