If you listen to the loudest voices, this is no time to be in a traditional business like publishing or retailing. Online sales are skinning them alive, and there seems no respite, with a high Australian dollar fuelling consumers’ transition to a new way of buying.
But for all the negative press for the publishing and retail sectors – both of them stalwart clients of heatset web work – their print suppliers largely say the sector is stable, at least for the time being.
Andrew Williams, executive general manager, print and distribution, at PMP Limited, points to the company’s annual results as evidence that the sector is holding up acceptably.
“Our year-on-year results are flat. Given that we’re on the back of the GFC, where some markets recovered and some didn’t, we take that as a pretty good result, to be honest,” he tells ProPrint.
“If you break the market into pieces, the retail market is still growing, the letterbox side of the business grew about 3% last year, [magazine] publishing is still doing it tough – on our numbers it’s down about 7%, and has been for the past two or three. So one is counteracting the other.”
Franklin Web chief executive Phil Taylor says: “There’s no question that retailers are reassessing their game plans. The so-called ‘new media’ is not the game-changer many people believe. Retailers tell us that they will spend less of their ad budget on catalogues, maybe dropping from 24pp back to 16pp – but inevitably within a few months, the bigger catalogues creep back into the mix.
“Catalogues still work. They continue to be successful because of the direct and positive impact on the bottom line. And while they continue to make the cash registers ring, we’ll have a great future,” adds Taylor.
Hannanprint managing director Tony Dedda is emphatic about the sector’s stability. “The current web market is steady. Some growth has been experienced but not in all segments,” he said.
“But we are very confident about the long-term future of print. It’s still one of the most effective methods of communicating and advertising,” adds Dedda.
Shopping spree
Hannanprint’s parent, IPMG, is putting its money where it mouth is, announcing the largest investment in printing infrastructure this side of the millennium.
The company will relocate its operations in Alexandria, Sydney, to a greenfield site in Warwick Farm at an estimated cost of about $90m, and install Australia’s biggest heatset web press, a 96pp twin-web Manroland Lithoman. In the process, it will reduce its workforce by about a third by 2013.
This reduction in headcount is being driven purely by the technology – the
new web press will not only be the country’s biggest, but should have the most bells and whistles. With an estimated to cost in the double-digit millions, the Lithoman will come with automatic plate loading and the German manufacturer’s Aurosys automated roll and material handling system.
Not to be outdone, Franklin Web has already updated press fleet. The firm recently launched a new 80pp Manroland Lithoman at a gala event in Melbourne.
Manroland Australia managing director Steve Dunwell is in an ebullient mood when he speaks to ProPrint about the drive for new technology in the local market (unsurprising, considering Manroland has been the main beneficiary of the new investments).
“In heatset sales in Australasia, it’s been great. We’ve had the Franklin Web press go in, we’ve got the Hannanprint order now, a heatset press going into the newspaper market in Perth, the Rotomans going into Webstar in New Zealand.
“But heatset sales worldwide will never reach the volumes of about three or four years ago,” he points.
That’s backed up by Matt Sharkady, general manager at Goss Graphic Systems Australasia, who says “it’s not like it was in 2004 or the ‘good old days’.
“We’ve seen a bit of an uptick, especially in North America in the past year, so after the financial crisis, North America has done fairly well, and Latin America has been pretty good for us. There’s been a fair bit of activity in that market. The Australian market has only seen one sale in the recent past. It’s more of a replace and update kind of market at the moment.”
The recent press sales look to be indicative of a trend worldwide for larger presses. Certainly the past decade has seen a constant increase in the sheer size of heatset web presses, led by the Goss Sunday 5000, a 96pp behemoth that has seen some success in Europe (the Manroland press at Hannanprint only achieves the same 96pp output due to its double web configuration).
Big enough
Size matters, but is width the overriding factor driving advances in heatset press technology? It doesn’t appear so. A wider web provides instant productivity gains through greater page counts delivered in the same time, but the real force driving innovation from manufacturers and investment by printers is the demand for extra productivity through flexibility and automation.
Klaus Schmidt, director of marketing and corporate communications at press maker KBA, reckons web width is near its maximum, and is only one factor in a broader search for productivity gains.
“The share of wider heatset presses has been growing in the past five years, especially in Europe and Australia. The market share of 64-, 72-, 80- and 96pp presses has been rising from 5% in 2005 to more than 15% in 2011. In the mid-term it should exceed the 20% mark. However, the share of 16pp presses is still more than 50% of the whole commercial web market.
“KBA’s commercial web product range ends with 80pp machines, and KBA will not join the 96pp segment since it seems too small even for two players. Most of the market demands more flexible machines for shorter runs. We don’t think presses with 2,000mm and more will have a big market share in the future,” says Schmidt.
Goss’ Sharkady says: “Web widths have got wider and wider. We have a press that is 2.86 metres wide, which is pushing the limits of engineering on standard presses, and is definitely easing up into the gravure market, which is on the decline; it has its place but not many people are buying gravure presses these days. The worldwide trend is run lengths are decreasing, not because print volumes are decreasing but because there’s more customisation and personalisation going on.”
Manroland’s Dunwell points to faster turnarounds through automation as the real trend in heatset technology. “I don’t think presses are going to get significantly faster. The size of the press will not grow much more either. It’s automation that brings the benefits now. And folders are getting more flexible in terms of special products. For special features and adding value, it’s more about what folders can do.
“It’s a combination of needs. I would not say faster speed, but more productive presses, which relates to sheets on the floor. It’s to do with automation in terms of automatic plate loading, colour controls, getting up to speed quickly, and it’s also about making the press run reliably and consistently.”
This move toward greater automation and efficiency is especially true in a world where print volumes are only going in one direction: down. There’s a certain irony that while developments in press technology – both web and sheetfed – have created machines with larger formats and higher running speeds than once thought possible, these advances are coming at a time when long runs are disappearing faster than printers can say ‘on demand’.
But even on presses with the most voluminous appetites, waste minimisation is increasingly a must-have, driving greater efficiencies. Franklin Web’s Taylor praises his new Lithoman’s ability to get the most value out of each roll of paper. He points to one recent run that was part of an order for 6.1 million 72pp
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