IBIS World named the pulp, paper and paperboard manufacturing sector as one of its five “industries to fall” in 2012, with an expected 3.7% decline.

Senior analyst Paul Lyons said there would be less work for printers as people swapped books for e-books.

Printers would also suffer as people increasingly looked to foreign websites like Amazon when they did want to buy hard copies, he said.

Lyons also expected printers to be hit hard by the continuing drift to online newspaper reading.

Two of the five industries IBIS World predicted to enjoy the most growth in 2012 were online education (10.6%) and online shopping (10.2%).

The others were diamond and gemstone mining (36.7%), motor vehicle manufacturing (14.3%) and biotechnology (10.3%).

The other four industries predicted to suffer the biggest falls in 2012 were iron and steel manufacturing (14.9%), institutional building construction (9%), cotton ginning (7.7%) and cut flower growing (4.3%).

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