27 Jan 2022
A year of turbulance for print media industry

2021 was a year of turbulance for print media industry. Together with our partners TEXSIB GmbH; S-print Baltic; WERSIGNS; Graphic & Paper Merchants Ireland, we reflect on the past year and look ahead to 2022.

🚚 Shakings in logistics. In spring, when governments started lifting lockdown restrictions across the world, print media was quite quick to recover. The industry was experiencing sudden and high demand, while manufacturers were unable to produce sufficient quantities of materials in such a short period of time. This caused a bottleneck in the supply chain, not to mention jammed seaports due to such immediate demand peak.

⚡ Rise of production costs. The energy crisis in both China and Europe resulted in much lower production capacity and a rise in production costs. Last year, the industry also faced skyrocketing prices of raw materials which started in the logistics sector, progressed to the raw material market, and ultimately reached the end-user. Since print media is a rather inert market, such a price rise hasn’t been observed in a long time.

💰 Record sales versus breakdowns.Pandemic shook up the market – some companies diversified their activity, some even left the business, meanwhile those who stayed and embraced the challenges managed to seize the opportunity. Besides, the market witnessed quite serious investments – those postponed from 2020. Since the sector might now be somewhat depleted, some hope for significant growth potential for 2022.

🌳 Sustainable choices. Since PVC material became more expensive in 2021, the price-gap between the latter and the PVC-Free became smaller, thus encouraging an increase in the use of #sustainable products. Also, the energy crisis might have evoked the so-called “print-media renaissance”. Because of their high energy consumption and environmental impact, large format HD screens might become less popular. Therefore, paper #advertising is a more environmentally friendly option.

Stepping into 2022, it looks like it might be a year of recession, with ongoing shakings. The demand will probably remain unpredictable and flactuating, though the supply might be scarce. The growth will be quite challenging not only because of the abnormal functioning of seaports, but also due to the shortage of overall resources – from raw materials to human resources. It seems there is going to be another year of turbulence.