Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Growth in Converting
Over at the Converting Blog, Keith Hevenor describes the market vitality he is witnessing in the converting and package printing industries:
Since taking on my new responsibilities with CMM last fall, I've been out attending as many shows and conferences as I can to learn the market and meet the players. I immediately noticed a big difference in the mood and energy at events in the converting and packaging space, no doubt because of the stability and growth that lie ahead.
He compares this to the stagnation in the commercial printing sector which is facing pressure from new media:
Commercial printing faces challenges from all other media, but on the converting and packaging side, those issues don't exist. The market will never deliver a box of cereal online, or a bag of chips via a mobile device, or a cardboard box on a CD. Products will always need to be packaged, and the production of those packages will continue to demand technological advancement because the package has become more important than ever in the success of the product.
Its hard to refute the growth that lies ahead for the converting and packaging industries, but I wonder how much the of the pie the US market will get as we import more and more goods (that require labels and packages, and in the case of labels, are produced close to the factories manufacturing the goods) from our neighbors in Asia and down south.
Maybe this is a good question to ask Dr. Joe Webb at the his free graph expo event.
Posted in: Converting
1 Comment
While we're importing more, we're exporting more, and many of the imported goods are in bulk and not packaged until they get here. It's really dynamic. I've figured that about $4b worth of packaging is part of the imports. It's not all that big, because so much of our packaging is for food, and that's either fully prepared here or arrives in bulk here and then packaged. In some cases, the imports are ingredients, such as cocoa or spices or other things. So it shouldn't automatically be assumed that the products need packaging. Packaging grows at the rate of 1% annually because of population, and then anything on top of that is the result of other effects, such as changes in preferences or innovations (people forget that there was a time when there wasn't frozen food!). It's a fascinating market because the materials and the filling technologies are all changing so much. As the world becomes wealthier, especially in emerging/developing economies, packaging will be a constantly growing and interesting business. It's becoming less so in the U.S. because household wealth is already so high and population growth is limited. Europe's population growth will not be all that good, in fact it is basically negative. But everywhere else in the world will be just plain fascinating.
Comment by Dr Joe - Friday, September 22, 2006 at 02:03 PM