The Ultimate Showdown Between Small And Medium-sized Traditional Printing Plants And Digital Printing Production Centers, Who Wins?

The ultimate showdown between small and medium-sized traditional printing plants and digital printing production centers, who wins?

The launch of high-speed inkjet rotary digital printing machine can be said to have changed the survival of some traditional printing plants, and also changed the future development direction of the graphic fast printing industry. The competition between traditional printing plants and digital printing production centers is more complex, and in this article, the author will share their respective advantages and shortcomings with you for the reference of industry insiders.

As the market continues to develop in a downturn, both sides are seeking a new model of survival and development. Since both parties adopt an asset-heavy business model, it is difficult to transfer assets, so they can only continue to expand related businesses around their own business. However, affected by the involution of the industry, the two sides began to penetrate each other's market areas. In terms of equipment investment, it has gradually evolved into a situation of "I also have your long board, and you have more of my short board".

In the previous article (click on the link to see the details), I mentioned that "the last spring of inkjet rotary digital printing press is coming". Sure enough, when the industry was full of grief and business owners complained that business was difficult to do, what I saw and heard was that all parties were working hard to build new factories and purchase new equipment with tens of millions of funds. Take the inkjet rotary digital printing machine as an example, there are many people who buy 10 units at one time, and the market of second-hand equipment is also booming, you buy a second-hand inkjet rotary digital printing machine, I buy second-hand Heidelberg, you have 440 I buy 880 plates, which can be called the "arms race" of the printing industry. According to the author's understanding, so far last year alone, the installed capacity of inkjet rotary digital printing machines has exceeded 500 units. In the final analysis, it is still the capacity that is to blame. The following is a brief introduction to the current situation of the two competitors.

Small and medium-sized traditional printing houses

In fact, traditional printing houses have undergone a reshuffle in the past few years due to environmental protection and market competition. The phrase "printing is death, not printing is definitely death" comes from the traditional printing house. They have also gone through a phase of production transformation, where labels and packaging should be the first choice for the direction of transformation, but the results are not ideal. On the one hand, there is a problem of investment, and on the other hand, there is a problem of technical level, which leads to the failure of the transformation. This is the same as the transformation of the graphic fast printing industry to advertise, and the transformation of advertising to do graphic and text fast printing is the same reason, and there are very few successful real transformations.

When inkjet rotary digital printing machines poured into the market, they directly impacted the traditional offset printing market, and did not attract the attention of small and medium-sized traditional printing factories at that time. On the contrary, large traditional printing houses see the future development direction of the market, and they realize that digital printing will be the next outlet, and it is also the trend of future development. For example, Shanxi Wanjia is one of the earliest traditional printing factories in China to deploy digital printing, and has invested more than 30 million yuan to build a high-standard digital printing workshop in China.



Wanjia production workshop

It is a pity that the enterprises that are most affected by the listing of inkjet rotary digital printing machines are small and medium-sized traditional printing houses, who may feel that the market is okay, or the funds are not sufficient, or the understanding is not enough, and the inkjet rotary digital printing machine is not introduced in time. Now when he is forced to the point where he has no way out, he realizes that his shortcomings need to be filled. For them, instead of transforming into labeling and packaging, it is better to go to the inkjet rotary digital printing machine, attract customers through low-price strategies, and then drain to the longboard business of traditional printing plants, so as to enhance market competitiveness and avoid being further encroached upon by the digital printing production center in the traditional printing market. Therefore, the recent rapid growth of the installed capacity of new and old inkjet rotary digital printing machines has caused the fierce price war to intensify.

Advantages of small and medium-sized traditional printing houses

1. From the perspective of the transformation of the printing industry, the transformation from the top down is relatively easy. Small and medium-sized traditional printing factories generally have richer experience and higher levels than digital printing production centers in terms of pre-press and post-press processes, production processes and daily management, such as workshop environment, equipment maintenance, ERP management, etc.

2. The seamless combination of long and short boards and the diversity of production processes make the market of small and medium-sized traditional printing factories have more choices and stronger competitiveness. Of course, it is better to have label and packaging production capacity.

Disadvantages of small and medium-sized traditional printing houses

1. Compared with digital printing production centers, small and medium-sized traditional printing factories lack flexibility in operation due to factors such as system and size.

2. In terms of the expansion of the e-commerce field and the transfer of peers, there is still a certain gap between small and medium-sized traditional printing factories and digital printing production centers.

Digital Printing Production Center

The formation of the digital printing production center is an upgraded industry that extends with the development of the graphic fast printing market. It has been mentioned in earlier related articles and will not be repeated here. What we want to discuss is that the industry involution has changed the traditional single production and processing model, and these enterprises are also actively looking for their own survival and development models. It can be broadly divided into the following two categories.

(1) Enterprises with publishing and teaching and auxiliary business as the core: such as Guangzhou Xiaoming Kuaiyin, which focuses on publishing business; There is also Qingdao Huataixing, which focuses on undertaking the printing business of teaching and auxiliary textbooks. Founder and good use of equipment are basically standard in these enterprises. Its enterprise is characterized by large investment, high production capacity, low cost and good profit.

(2) Enterprises engaged in peer processing business: such as Beijing Zhongcai, Chengdu Shunyin Tianxia, Zhengzhou Nais, such enterprises basically take the road of large-scale development. Equipment with Epson printheads is their first choice, and they usually have more than 10 inkjet web digital presses, and some companies are also equipped with Heidelberg presses. The characteristics of the enterprise are large investment, large production capacity, low cost and relatively low profit, but it has the strength to compete with small and medium-sized traditional printing plants.

Shunyin world production workshop



Advantages of a digital printing production center

1. In the fragmented market environment, the digital printing production center is significantly better than the traditional small and medium-sized traditional printing factories at the marketing level by virtue of its flexible operation mode and familiarity with e-commerce operations, as well as the background of starting from peer business in the early days.

2. Affected by the market ecological environment, many graphic fast printing shops will be greatly reduced in the future, but this also prompts graphic fast printing shops to further cooperate with digital printing production centers to achieve two-way complementarity and bring a large number of transfer customers to digital printing production centers.

3. After the introduction of a large number of customers and self-operated customers of the graphic fast printing shop, the digital printing production center has added more flexible services and products to the industrial layout, which is indeed facing huge challenges for small and medium-sized traditional printing plants.

Disadvantages of Digital Printing Production Centers:

1. The iteration of inkjet printing technology is too fast, and the investment of enterprises is too high, which brings the risk of capital and investment.

2. In terms of production capacity and cost, if the enterprise does not have an absolute advantage, it will face the risk of shutdown.

3. The cost of production process and management is too high (the bad result of less investment in automated post-press and software platform).

To sum up, the author believes that healthy competition between small and medium-sized traditional printing factories and digital printing production centers will create more demand and growth for the market, and also promote both sides to increase investment in technological progress and innovation. In the future, with the transformation and upgrading of the field of digital printing and the continuous progress of technology, both sides are expected to usher in their own better development prospects and will also become the backbone of digital printing.