leaner and more efficient, british printers push forward in digital age
At a media conference a few years ago, the editor of The Guardian, while thinking about the future of printing, recalled that his newspaper had installed the latest printing press in 2005.
\"I have a feeling in my bones that they may be the last one,\" said editor Alan Rusbridger . \".
Efforts by traditional print media executives to explore the future of digital have been documented in detail.
But what about executives who are more connected to the media?
Who runs a big printing company?
Ask Roy Kingston, 55. year-
Wyndeham, a private holding company, is one of the largest printers in the UK and its portfolio includes UK circulation for The Economist and men\'s health.
For 30 years, as a player in the printing game, he felt the impact of numbers.
So far he has survived to tell the story, even if everyone in his industry is so lucky.
\"This meeting room is the only thing that hasn\'t changed here,\" he told a visitor sitting at an antique conference table in the windehan printing center.
\"Everything else in this factory is different.
All the equipment was changed and the people were changed.
In many ways, the printing itself has been digitized. Industrial-
Powerful laser printers enable large printing plants to produce quickly and economicallySmall effective
Run in bulk on demand.
Even Wyndeham\'s big offset press
Flat print created from digital files-
The level of automation is so high that only a dozen crew members can do their job.
\"Now this is almost a business that nobody is involved in . \"
Kingston said, passing through the huge but almost uninhabited printing Hall.
We have 350 people in this factory.
Now we have 114.
But the workload has more than doubled.
\"Back in the 1990 s, Sir.
Kingston says the plant has three presses that can produce about 20,000 copies of 32-
A page is published in an hour.
There are now two machines capable of producing three times the output.
Wyndeham\'s factory will take this home and will publish the first issue of The Economist, which reads \"The rise of robots\" on the cover \".
\"People are losing their jobs and there is no way to turn this around . \"Kingston said.
\"Now, to be successful in this industry, you have to be lean, mean and clean.
In 2001, there were about 200,000 employees in the British printing industry.
According to the British Federation of printing industries, there are now less than 125,000 people.
Although the printing industry in Britain is very large, it is not the largest printing industry in the world.
Revenue ranks fifth after the United States, China, Japan and Germany.
However, its challenges and opportunities are symbolic.
According to the government\'s National Bureau of Statistics, sales of British printers have been steadily declining over the past 20 years, without any respite.
According to Key Note, revenue in the industry is expected to drop from more than 10 billion to about 17 billion pounds by 2017, about $15 billion, down from more than 1990 pounds, a market research firm
According to the Smithsonian Institution, the global printing industry expected revenue of $880 billion last year and will continue to grow at an annual rate of about 2% by 2018, driven mainly by emerging market countries, another research company.
The Smithsonian Institution said China could overtake the United States as the world\'s largest printing market this year, while India will lead the UK to become the world\'s number one. 5 spot by 2018.
Given the region\'s economic downturn, European printers are in a particularly difficult situation.
The gradual recovery in print demand in Europe has not translated into a recovery, and the bulk of what has been lost will not be recovered, says Mr. Smith Piera.
A number of publications, including the male lifestyle magazine Maxim and the trade journal The Age of accounting, have completely withdrawn from the UK printing market and have chosen to publish onlineonly versions.
Britain, which has a large number of trade unions, is also vulnerable to competition from the rest of Europe.
\"The products offered by the Italians are of high quality, but the price is also very low, because their labor costs are very low,\" said Robert G . \"
Picard, professor of media economics at Oxford University.
\"There is a very efficient printing industry in Germany and Scandinavia, which eliminates some price issues,\" he said . \".
\"So for the time --
As sensitive as a magazine and must be done in the region, the best deals may not be in the U. K. —
You can spend the night here.
\"Book publishers are not as time-bound as newspapers or magazines are, they look more eastwards, printing is increasingly flowing to Asia, where labor costs are lower.
\"All of this has led to overcapacity and has made huge profits from printing companies . \"Picard said.
If the plight of the industry can be seen on the surface, the ExCeL exhibition center in London may do so.
According to the industry publication print weekly, this year\'s Ipex is an international printing industry conference held at the ExCeL center in 2010, requiring only 30% of the exhibition space. Mr.
Kingston, Wyndeham, has been participating in Ipex since the 1980 s and has been affected by this change.
\"Even the exhibition four years ago, you need a day to visit, and now you can visit it in just one hour,\" he said . \".
\"None of your coffee will be cold.
\"The survivors of the industry are sticking to it, in part because they go beyond print media publishing and move into the packaging and labeling space --
Part of the physical world where digital equivalents cannot easily follow.
\"We are all buying things in cartons or cans with some sort of label on them,\" Mr.
Picard said, \"so the work of the printing industry in this area is really expanding. ”Mr.
Kingston believes that packaging \"is undoubtedly the biggest growth area in printing.
He cited a Swedish study of supermarket shoppers, which found that prices tend to be second only to labels in people\'s buying decisions.
\"Most people buy products that they don\'t even know, based on packaging, based on what\'s hanging in front of them,\" he said . \".
Like other survivors, windehan no longer only focuses on paper and ink.
The company has developed a product called \"emagine\", a production management software that media companies can use for printing and online delivery.
It has also set up a department that focuses on online media applications, \"whether it\'s on mobile, smartphones or iPads,\" said Paul Utting, chief executive of Wyndeham.
Printers are also responding to the changing needs of advertisers, who have become accustomed to adjusting their advertising to narrow niche markets due to online media.
Digital printing-
Desktop laser or inkjet printing pro-
This allows retailers to print a custom catalog of purchase preferences for individual customers.
This also applies to books and magazines. Kingston said.
\"We can now make a customized version of any magazine;
We can bind it in different ways and use special colors.
We can personalize and send.
The added value there is much higher.
For the British film magazine Empire, which was released in April, Wyndeham printed the cover for it, and the publisher wanted to celebrate the upcoming movie Godzilla by launching a \"megazine\"nearly one-
The third problem is bigger than the usual one.
It is sold as a collector\'s item.
With its customization capabilities, Wyndeham can easily adapt.