By Sander Sondaal, Director Commercial Print Sales, Commercial and Industrial Printing Group, Ricoh Europe
Digital inkjet is the fastest growing print process and it will perform more strongly than any other technology over the next few years.
This is according to market research consulting firm Mordor Intelligence. Its Inkjet Printing Market – Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2021 – 2026) report valued the global inkjet printing market at E34.29 billion in 2020 and is expected to reach E41.36 billion at a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 3.11% between 2021 to 2026.
Driving this growth is the huge investment being made in inkjet technology and the enhanced quality and productivity that today’s high speed inkjet devices deliver.
Innovative concepts and technological inventions featured in colour inkjet products provide the right balance between image quality, image durability, print speed, purchase price, and operational cost.
This combination became attractive for early adopter commercial printers enabling them to adapt their application offering and cost effectively transition analogue print to digital.
The marriage of high quality colour print, media flexibility and the ability to add variable content delivers a compelling business case and it is broadening digital inkjet’s effectiveness across different sectors.
Book printing, magazines and catalogues were all highlighted by Mordor as growth opportunities while Smithers reported all inkjet sectors were enjoying growth in its The Future of Inkjet Printing to 2025 early last year.
It said this was because inkjet suits the changing demands of print buyers because it can be more responsive to the preferences of consumers than analogue alternatives. The continuing technological developments, together with the greater experience of print service providers (PSPs), combine to make inkjet competitive against offset, flexo, gravure, screen and digital toner printing.
And while the pandemic will have had an impact on investment in the technology, the report’s statement remains true that as inkjet press performance improves, the economic crossover moves to longer runs. This makes it an ever more interesting opportunity.
It also futureproofs your operation by placing you at the forefront of this growth. It allows you to expand your application capabilities supported by the technology’s continuing evolution.
The report also pointed to inkjet’s ability to help PSPs become more agile and responsive to client requirements, deliver total variability cost effectively, and print only what is needed on demand to cut waste and enable production and supply chain efficiency.
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