The future of digital printing is looking healthy. So claims a February 2023 report from research company Verified Market Research (VMR), which echoes the findings of a number of other recent reports. All forecast that technological innovation and shifting customer demand will redefine the print industry over the coming years.
VMR’s Global Digital Printing Market Size predicts that the digital printing market will grow globally at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6% between 2023 and 2030, increasing in value from $8,559.80m in 2021 to an estimated $13,651.62m by 2030.
Nikhil Pampatwar, head of research & intelligence at VMR, noted, “The market for digital printing is expanding at an increasingly rapid rate, and both the equipment and the colours are continually enhancing their capabilities and environmental profiles.”
Growth of digital hardware and materials
Two more reports predict an expansion of the digital printing equipment market and of inkjet colourant. The Inkjet Printers Market, a report from research publishers Precision Reports (published August 2022), predicts that the global inkjet printer market will grow in value from $39bn in 2021 to $54.8bn in 2027.
Similarly, research from LPI, published in December 2022, forecasts that the inkjet colourant market size worldwide will increase in value from $57m in 2022 to $65m in 2039. Some of this growth is attributed to a bounce-back effect as markets return to pre-pandemic levels – aqueous dye-sub inks used in soft signage printing, for example, had declined as demand for event graphics tumbled during lockdowns. But even taking this into account, digital is flourishing across a range of markets, including wide-format and industrial printing.
“Experts predict that digital printing will continue to move from commercial printing to publishing and packaging,” commented Pampatwar, “becoming faster and designed to handle more types of printing in the future.”
Analogue’s shrinking market share
If digital printing is on the rise, then analogue is taking a hit. The Future of Digital vs Offset Printing to 2027 report, released last year by data analytics company Smithers, while predicting a similar growth rate in digital print as for the VMR report (5.7% CAGR from 2022-2027), points to expected analogue print (litho) growth at below one per cent.
According to Smithers, for the ten years between 2017 and 2027, the analogue market – though still dominant – will actually shrink in value, from $734.5bn to $721.4bn.
Not all of that contraction is due to digital, but analogue is having to contend with the cost and productivity benefits of inkjet. For example, in a sector such as advertising, digital has technological advantages in terms of turn-around speed and cost-sensitive customisation. As more efficient machines are introduced to market, the cost of inkjet is expected to fall further, putting digital in reach of higher-volume jobs until now only cost-effective on litho. Inkjet is also favoured further by a growing demand for shorter runs as print clients seek to reign in budgets.
Digital is striving for litho’s quality
One area where litho is preeminent is in print quality – with its colour excellence and consistency regarded as incontestable. Digital, though, is playing a good catch-up game as manufacturers strive to continually improve quality. Randy Vandagriff, SVP print for Kodak, is optimistic about the future of digital: “While the majority of what is printed worldwide is not done digitally, there are technological advancements making digital print quality equal to that of offset and more economical for small and medium runs.”
Litho, though, will remain dominant for some time yet, while manufactures have introduced machine learning and AI software in pursuit of greater operational efficiencies and downtime minimisation. The Smithers report points to flexo as being the best-positioned analogue process in the coming years – used for labels and print packaging, it’s a sector expected to see strong growth.
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