Japan's printing market will shrink by 30% by 2020

According to recent research and prediction by the All Japan Printing Association, the Japanese printing industry will further shrink in size from 2010 to 2020, and the sales, number of companies, and number of employees will be greatly reduced. For the scale of Japan's printing market in 2020, the Federation made three kinds of predictions: optimistic forecast of 5.5 trillion yen, a decline of 10%; pessimistic forecast of only 3.8 trillion yen, a decrease of 37%; The median forecast is 4.6 trillion yen, a decrease of 24%. Even if the median forecast is taken, the scale of Japan's printing industry in 2020 will be comparable to that of the early 1980s. The forecast also believes that the number of printing industry companies in Japan will be around 70% in 2020, 8,000 less than in 2010, a total decrease of 32%, and the number of employees will decrease by about 100,000, a decrease of 27%.

In 2010, the Japanese printing market was more than 6 trillion yen, which was equivalent to the level of 1986. Compared with the historically highest level of 8.93 trillion yen in 1991, the total market size in 2010 was reduced by about one-third. Compared with the 8.14 trillion yen in 2000, the total amount was reduced by a quarter.

In the next 10 years, what business areas in Japan's printing market will likely grow, which businesses will shrink, what are the difficulties in the operation of printing companies, and what resources are needed to overcome these difficulties? In response, the Japan Printing Industry Federation conducted a questionnaire survey not long ago.

Regarding the business area that may grow in the next 10 years, the different clubs of the Federation have different answers. The Japan Printing Industry Federation whose members are mainly large- and medium-sized companies believe that the top-ranking companies are packaging, planning, and high-performance materials research and development; Subcontracting, bundle delivery services, inventory management, digital content planning and commercial printing are among the top 3; other club companies’ comprehensive responses are packaging, commercial printing and information processing. At the same time, although the answer to the business areas that may be reduced is different, the resolutions of commercial printing, publishing, printing, and office printing are obviously reduced. From this we can see that the future environment of the traditional printing business is quite severe.

The survey results also show that intense competition, shrinking market size, low product prices and difficulty in improving, low operating efficiency, insufficient supply of raw materials, and high prices are the headaches for most printing companies. In addition, nearly 40% of the surveyed companies ranked their talents as the top demand for the company, followed by equipment, 18%, funds, 17%, technology, 15%, and IT and informatization, 10%. Among them, among the talents needed by enterprises, 23% of companies lack management and sales talents, 18% lack planning and market talents, 11% lack technology talents, and 8% lack skilled technicians. In the survey of corporate strengths, only 15% of companies answered that they have the strength of talents. It can be seen that most companies feel that there are insufficient talents and that there are not many companies that dare to claim to have the advantage of talents.

In the fields that are regarded as important in the future, the development of new technologies and new products is unanimously favored, followed by talent guarantees and training, market operations and sales and market development, and cooperation with other industries and other industries. It can be seen that, given the difficulties of traditional printing, exploration of new products and services is on the rise.