The World of Print is Flat Too!

For most of the past ten years, one of the major trends in U.S. business has been the rise of globalization. Tom Friedmann, in his best seller book, The World is Flat, made the case that if you’re not global, you won’t survive. NPES members have long been active exporters: today we estimate that over seventy percent of them are involved in exporting to some extent. Twenty percent of our members strictly import to the US market although their parent companies are global in nature. So, roughly one tenth of our membership concentrate on the US market and have yet to explore the global printing industry.

Much attention has focused on the so called “BRIC” countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China), the fastest-growing emerging markets. As we look at emerging markets, the question becomes which countries, if any, will become the next China or India? To provide members with accurate and detailed information on the worldwide market, NPES through PRIMIR (The Print Industries Market Information and Research Organization) has contracted with PIRA International of the United Kingdom to conduct a study of the “World-Wide Market for Print.” This research will identify the top global markets for print, printing equipment and supplies, as well as emerg-ing markets where members should set their sights going forward. It is an incredible reference document to aid any NPES member seeking information on a given export market.

Not surprisingly, the U.S. is the single largest print market worldwide, weighing in at $186 billion in 2006. However, the fastest growing markets are the emerging nations illustrated in Table 1 above. While the world market is expected to grow at a rather anemic 2.5% from 2005 to 2006, the emerging regions will grow between 11% and 17% – an impressive opportunity for NPES members.

In 2001, these emerging markets comprised 21% of the total world print market. By 2006 they will represent over 27%. That is huge growth when you consider that the world market was $450 billion in 2001! The absolute global print growth between 2001 and 2006 is forecast to be U.S. $149.7 billion for all print markets. Emerging regions will account for $71.1 billion of this growth, almost half of the total. We are all quite aware that the U.S. market has been declining or flat since 2000, so these emerging markets represent solid growth potential for NPES member companies.