Commercial printers across Australia and New Zealand are increasingly looking to packaging print as a real opportunity, and moving to invest in technology to serve the market.
The latest report from global print and packaging analyst Smithers, confirming that printed packaging will continue to be a growth market, has served to highlight the size of that opportunity to commercial print businesses.
Smithers forecast that printed packaging will achieve 4.2 per cent CAGR for each of the next five years across the Australia and New Zealand market, which means the market size will have increased by around 25 per cent by the end of the decade. It also said that digitally printed packaging would show the strongest growth.
The consistent stream of positive data on packaging print, and the reality on the ground, is proving motivating for what have been commercial print businesses to build a packaging operation, as commercial print flatlines at best.
The biggest of them all, IVE, is targeting a $150m printed folding carton business. It acquired a $45m-a-year packaging printer, JacPak in Melbourne, and is now building a duplicate operation at its Sydney facility.
The biggest printer in New Zealand, Blue Star, is planning to triple its folding carton operation, it is currently creating a new 25,000sqm facility into which it will move all its Auckland operations, and into which will go a new highly specified Koenig & Bauer B1 six-colour with double coater and hybrid features offset press, which will be the first of its kind in the region.
In Sydney, Bright Print, one of the country’s leading family-owned commercial printers, has this week acquired packaging print operation Morprint, which Bright says is a strategic move to bolster its packaging prowess.
Digital packaging print is growing strongly, in multiple segments including flexibles, corrugated, and cans – Orora and OnPack among those that are installing digital can printing technology, enabling short runs and on-demand work. The arrival of ePac in ANZ, with its digitally printed pouches, has shown the industry that new technology can successfully create a market that did not previously exist.
Similarly, the uptake of custom-size short-run boxmaking and inline printing solutions – there are 70 Autobox units alone in ANZ now – reveals strong demand from a new market.
The importance of packaging is also reflected at trade shows; at the biggest of them all, drupa, in May, half of all stands at the traditionally commercial-focused expo had packaging solutions. In the same vein, Labelexpo, which took place in Chicago last month, had a dedicated flexible packaging zone for the first time, as label printers also see packaging as an opportunity.
