Quick Printing

In a past life I worked for a couple of years as editor of the United Mine Workers Journal. It was a very instructive gig that exposed me to a gritty industry and tough people who risked their lives on a fairly regular basis. I visited many coal mines, both under and above ground, and got a pretty good picture of the dangers involved—both to the miners and to the environment. I bring this up because I recently ran across the term “Coal-powered Internet.” It was used in reference to the ongoing argument about whether printing is more or less environmentally friendly than electronic media.

One side of the argument maintains that print destroys forests and wastes energy because all that paper has to be transported from one place to another. Therefore, electronic media is better for the environment. Aside from ignoring the issue of reforestation and recycling, this argument falls flat when one considers that electronic media require electricity—54% of which comes from coal-fired power plants that are the single largest source of air pollution in the U.S. Add to that the environmental impact of the actual mining process on land and streams—especially with the hideous practice of mountain top removal—and the case for the environmental friendliness of electronic media becomes less obvious.

The fact is that printing and electronic media both have their environmental strengths and drawbacks. They will also to continue to co-exist for the foreseeable future. Only when alternate sources of electricity production replace the burning of coal will electronic media have an environmental edge on print.

It’s the old “good news, bad news” deal. First the good news. The United States Postal Service (USPS) has announced it won’t increase rates on “market dominant products for 2010.” Those products include First-Class Mail, Standard Mail, periodicals, and single piece Parcel Post. It also includes nonprofit mail. According to the USPS, “This is the right decision at the right time for the right reason. Promoting the value of mail and encouraging its continued use is essential for jobs, the economy, and the future of both the Postal Service and the mailing industry.” This should please printers who are also in the mailing services business.

The bad news, however, is that the USPS is projected to lose more than $7 billion in this fiscal year. That’s the 11th net loss in the last 12 fiscal quarters. Most of that can be blamed on the enormous decline in mail volume—down 20 billion pieces in the first three quarters of 2009. The decline will certainly continue as electronic alternatives to mail put more pressure on mail volumes.

Once again, the losses have prompted calls for privatization, which is an old idea I doubt will soon come to pass. Interestingly, USPS is looking at raising rates on Priority Mail and Express Mail, which are under-priced compared to the private sector competition from outfits such as FedEx and UPS. Meanwhile, 44 cents will get your letter to where it is supposed to go—usually.

I just got back from the Specialty Graphics Imaging Association (SGIA) Expo in New Orleans. It was quite an experience—a hodge-podge of equipment for producing digital wide-format printing, digital textiles imprinting, and screen printing, all under one roof. It seemed a little schizophrenic to me, but the various technologies seemed to be peacefully co-existing, at least for the time being. There were lots of familiar names at the show such as EFI, HP, and Agfa, but there were also a raft of companies I’d never heard of. What became obvious after a while is that a digital transition is well underway within the segments that SGIA represents.

I was at the show in my new role as executive editor for the Cygnus Graphics Media Group which includes Quick Printing, Printing News, and Wide-Format Imaging. What I was looking for were areas of synergy and crossover among the three magazines. A lot of the wide-format stuff was actually grand-format (larger than 64") and probably too big for small commercial printers to consider. However, there was plenty of stuff that would fit into a small commercial operation.

The addition of this capability is already underway. In the franchise segment, wide-format accounts for 3.3% of sales. In the Top 100, it makes up 3.5% of sales. That’s not huge, but it is significant. It is also likely to grow as commercial printers look for new profit centers. One indication of this increasing crossover into wide-format was the number of commercial printers who stopped by the Cygnus booth. Those I spoke with had mostly made the transition to a digital workflow and were very much aware of how that has prepared them for a major move into the wide-format arena.

PIA’s latest Economic & Print Market Flash Report is out. It covers the second quarter of the year, which seems like a long time ago, but the info is still interesting. Not surprisingly, printing industry shipments for the next 12 months are expected to continue their decline—although at a slower rate. The declines will be mostly in the conventional ink-on-paper segment, while toner-based print and inkjet printing should expect some growth. Income from ancillary services is expected to remain stable. Again, no surprises here.

Of more interest is the projection that as the number of printing establishments continues to decline, those remaining in business will “gain market share” and “have sales gains even as total print sales fall.” That is something I have been emphasizing in my presentations and prognostications about our industry segment for years. I can’t prove it definitively, but my feeling is that our segment has usually been better at adapting to the changing economic and technological environments than the larger companies simply because our businesses are much more agile.