20 new HP Indigo presses in the Nordics during 2020

The HP supplier tells that they experienced a severe drop during April in their presses around the region, but that production started to increase again already from May. During fall the total number of prints have been on the same level as 2019.

“During November 2020 there were more prints in all HP Indigo presses in the Nordics compared to November 2019. Several of Visutech’s clients experienced an all-time-high, “says Johan Gustafsson, head of sales at Visutech.

However, the picture is very different if you compare sub-industries such as commercial print and advertising on one hand and packaging and label on the other hand.

“Commercial printers which work towards advertising agencies etc are still struggling while online and e-commerce have recovered very well. However, we are glad too see more and more commercial printers recovering and actually hitting all-time-high,” says Gustafsson.

Sweden is the largest market for Visutech with around 50% of the prints, while Denmark, Norway and Finland combined constitute the other 50%.

Major growth for industrial printing

Label and packaging are the two segments where the increase in volumes are the highest – in many cases the increase is above 25 per cent.

“Many label and packaging printers didn’t notice any decline at all during the spring,” Gustafsson continues.

Time for change

“Our clients are changing with the society as we have both a serious virus situation and consequently a recession. Now is the time to change from large analogue offset presses to flexible, digital offset presses. This change is needed in order to meet modern clients’ need for shorter delivery times and flexible volumes with offset quality and better profit for the printer,” says Johan Lidström, deputy MD at Visutech.

20 new presses sold in 2020

Lidström tells that Visutech normally sells between 20 and 25 Indigo presses a year and that the company has sold 20 presses in 2020. 10 presses have been acquired by commercial printers and 10 by industrial players.

“What is very exciting to see is that some of the investments in 2020 on the commercial side are investments that are done to move the commercial business closer to the industrial segments. These investments constitute a broadening of scope and a step into the packaging world for several commercial printers,” says Lidström.

A longer version of this article was first published at Branschkoll.se .