PrintingNews.com

In printing industry trade magazines and the popular press, China is generally regarded as the most significant threat on the horizon. However, competition also comes from mature economies. For some time, the most significant competition for U.S. printers has come from next door—where Canadian printers operate just like those south of the border unburdened by tariffs on printed products. Another very capable printing industry is in Germany, the home of Drupa, the once-every-four-year flagship trade show. For perspective, Printing News looks at the German printing industry and the affect it has on U.S. printers.

For reasons many and complex, the North American printing industry has come to rely on Germany for the tools it needs to remain competitive. The vaunted German engineering that put Mercedes Benz and BMW at the pinnacle of the automotive industry also made Heidelberg, MAN Roland, and KBA the hallmark brands of printing equipment. Even the JDF and JMF software protocols that promise finally to bring automation to the industry have roots in Germany. CIP3, the predecessor of the current CIP4 industry standard, was formed by Heidelberg in 1995 and was managed by the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics until the current organization took responsibility for the effort.

Goings and Comings

In 2004, the most recent year for which complete data is available, Germany exported $5.93 billion in printing equipment around the world, some 3.6 times the value of equipment exported by its nearest competitor, Japan, which exported only $1.644 billion.

The principal importer of printing machinery was the United States, which brought in $1.924 billion in 2004, followed closely by China, which imported $1.583 billion. Germany itself imported $1.009 billion in printing equipment, for a net export value of $4.92 billion. Still, Germany is more than the most significant producer of printing equipment. As might be expected, the country is also home to a significant printing industry. German printers differ only slightly from those in North America.

With a 2005 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of $12,360 trillion, the U.S. economy is nearly five times larger than that of Germany. Still, the German economy is the third largest in the world, and the largest in Europe, with a GDP of $2,504 trillion in 2005, despite the fact that Germany is only as large as Montana. U.S. workers are more productive, however, with a 2005 per capita GDP of $41,800, compared with only $30,400 in Germany. Faced with these statistics, and the fact that both Germany and the United States are mature, business-friendly economies that depend greatly on advertising, it is reasonable to expect that the German printing industry would be significant, but smaller than that in the United States.

U.S. Worker Bees

Germany, with its significantly smaller economy, boasts nearly 12,000 printing companies with more than 186,000 employees. These firms generated €16.525 billion ($20,656 billion) in 2004 sales. That same year, an estimated 60,000 U.S. printing companies, with 658,876 employees, produced $89,456 billion in sales. Thus, U.S. printers proved themselves more than 22 percent more productive on a per capita basis than their German counterparts.

Despite the fact that U.S. printers appear more productive, imports of printed products from Germany were $124.1 million in the most recent year for which data is available, whereas U.S. printing exports to Germany were only $111.1 million.

Unquestionably, a major factor in the relative export/import imbalance lies with the fact that the German government emphasizes exports, while the U.S. government does far less evangelizing. Also, as part of the European Union, Germany has a ready market for printing in other member countries, whereas printing exported from the United States—with the exception of that to Canada—must be shipped a significant distance.