Smithers Pira Report and What it Reveals About the Future of Digital Printing

Smithers Pira is the worldwide authority on packaging, paper and print industry supply chains and provides detailed insights into current trends and developments. The company is renowned for over 80 years of technical and scientific experience and specialises in consulting of clients around the world with their business and testing requirements.

Just recently, they published their Smithers Pira Report on The Future of Digital Printing to 2024. With digital printing having seen rapid progress and countless innovations during the last years, the future of this technology is highly promising. In the following, we summarise some of the major findings of Smithers Pira’s report which focuses on details of the key trends driving the industry as well as technology forecasts for the upcoming decade.

Figures as Far as the Eye can Reach

Before diving deep into the figures provided by the market study, the question of the importance of digital printing for companies must be answered. The technology enables print suppliers to improve the levels of service they offer to customers and provides new opportunities, which they can benefit from in a financial respect. Measures like personalisation of marketing tools and increasing versioning made possible by digital printing gain in importance during the current age of digitalisation.

The total digital printing market will reach 225% of the 2013 value by 2024. In concrete terms, the digital print market in 2013 was worth $120.9 billion in constant 2012 dollar values.

Change in Leadership in Digital Printing

At the moment, electrophotography is the major contributor to the digital market, but that might change in the near future. The report ascribes increasing importance to the inkjet market and predicts it to overtake electrophotography by the end of 2019. By 2024, inkjet will account for 56% of the overall market value of digital print.

What the Future of Digital Printing Holds

The report predicts packaging to be the most dynamic field of application over the next ten years. Packaging types and materials range from cartons, rigids, flexibles, metals and many more and are ideally suited for most digital production methods. Also the graphics sector, which is closely connected to packaging, will be impacted.

Furthermore, Smithers Pira claim that the technology will affect a variety of other applications as well:

“These applications include textiles, ceramic tiles, flat and round glass, decorative laminates, automotive applications, electronic and photovoltaic products, bio-medical and many other promotional/miscellaneous items.”

You can purchase the complete report here. It contains over 100 tables and figures of market analysis and forecasts for the global digital printing market.

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