Hot Markets for 2007 — Prepare for Growth

Additionally, 64-bit computing is under way with a proliferation of new software, but with less packaging. Memory and storage ($2.4B to print, -14 percent) and hosting ($1.5B to print, 0 percent) are slowing just as printers are entering the once-hot market. Only search-advertising providers like Yahoo and Google are succeeding, but at the expense of all but book printing. It’s time to log off from this sector.

Packaged foods ($698B, +7 percent; with $9.8B to print, +1 percent), at Number 6, and food service ($659B, +7 percent; with $4.6B to print, +12 percent), at Number 21, will feature trans fats phase-outs on labels and menus.

Slowdowns in the growth of fast foods/takeaway ($1.8B in print, +19 percent) and full-service restaurants ($2.2B in print, +6 percent), and a leveling in dry foods/snacks and confections/baked goods ($3.4B to print, +3 percent), will feed turnaround promotional print advertising, coupons, POP, outdoor and take-away packaging.

Kraft Foods (+10 percent), with a 5 percent market share, is reformulating to low-carb products with a half-billion dollars for marketing in ’07. The largest flexible packaging growth, free of partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, will continue in fresh-packaged foods ($3.5B to print, +19 percent). Stale will be litho stacked labels and board converting for bottled, canned, frozen/microwave foods ($3.0B to print; -8 percent). Pet foods ($.3B in print, +30 percent), as last year, will run ahead of the pack.

Moving Forward

Speeding from Number 9 to Number 7 with only ink in the tank will be automotive ($1.6T, +1 percent; with $8.9B to print, +4 percent). Off-road vehicles ($.8B to print, +15 percent), with Hogs, Cats and Deeres, will accelerate on the unpaved landscape while new vehicles ($4.0B to print, -5 percent) brake their buys on the road.

Featured will be POP, outdoor, high-end sheetfed, pressure sensitive/decal OEM and personalized direct mail. Stalled finance/insurance ($2.0B to print, 0 percent), rentals/leases ($1.2B to print, -2 percent) and used vehicles ($0.5B to print, 0 percent) will decelerate open-web RPMs. Regional dealer groups will be increasing demand for targeted direct mail and FSIs.