Heidelberg Druckmaschinen AG (Heidelberg) presents for the first time its report on the current climate in lthe print media industry. The company provides weekly updates on the development of print volumes for the packaging, label and commercial printing markets. The representative base of anonymous data is made up of around 5.000 globally selected offset presses of all formats, currently connected to the Heidelberg cloud.
The current data presented in this report shows around 50 countries per segment and has been distributed over a world map. The colors awarded to each country are the result of the comparison between the current estimated production and that of the previous year. The scale ranges from 1 (severe impact of COVID-19 on production) to 8 (production above last year's level), with 7 being production at the previous year's level.
“With this report on the climate of the graphic industry and printed media we have been able to take the pulse of our clients”, he says Rainer Hundsdörfer, CEO of Heidelberg. “This weekly initiative that we have launched has been developed to support printers during the Corona pandemic. It is important that all participants in the printing industry understand which market segments and countries are currently most affected. Thanks to all those printers that have remained connected to the cloud and to the data generated, we have been able to develop an exhaustive map of the situation, and we publish this information without any access restriction to set an example for the industry ”.
The most relevant data from the last four weeks are:
• During the Corona pandemic, printing production in China fell by 80% compared to the usual values, but the progressive fall of the curve has had a positive influence on its recovery and, currently, presents values similar to those of the previous year , both in the commercial segments and in those of packaging and labels.
• The packaging and labels segment has remained stable during this period, mainly due to the increase in demand for pharmaceutical and food packaging. However, local supply problems, such as discontinued paper production in India, are having a negative impact on printers in some countries.
• While production in all countries remained stable until mid-March 2020 and was even above the levels of the previous year, the outbreak of the pandemic and the closure of countries has significantly reduced the volume of production globally, especially in the commercial market.
You can find the weekly updates at: www.heidelberg.com/PMI-climate.
