Will consolidations continue in the print industry?

Written by Lasse Krogell, Nopa:

At the Intergraf / NOPA “Print Matters” seminar in June in Switzerland there was an interesting presentation about how consolidation has taken the first steps in Switzerland. In the Nordic countries there has been an ongoing consolidation development already for some time and still room to continue.

When we started planning the November NOPA seminar, we thought that we should try to get the key players in the Nordic print consolidation to form the theme of our seminar. Our aim is to hear some deeper information of what it means for the companies and the personnel to join forces. Luckily, we succeed in our goal. On the fifth of November in Helsinki we will have presentations representing the newspaper sector, heatset printing and the more traditional commercial printing.

In newspaper printing we had in Finland in 2012 35 printing sites. From the beginning of next year there will probably be only 9 left. A similar development has happened in all other “NOPA countries”. At the seminar we will hear backgrounds to this development where we all get the news to our phones when something happens, in stead of reading it in tomorrows printed newspaper. Keskisuomalainen is one of the players in the Finnish newspaper publishing and printing sector whose story we will hear.

When the association we today know as NOPA was formed, it was called Rulloffsetklubben, the Roll offset club. Then the Nordic Association for Heatset Printers. Today NOPA is strongly alive but has only a few heatset printing companies left. The reduction of heatset printers started earlier than for the newspaper printers but has continued. Today we have only one or two heatset printing companies per “NOPA country” left. Aller publishing used to have magazine printing in Denmark, Sweden and Norway. Today there is no inhouse printing anymore. Also this will be a presentation worth listening to.

After these two more product oriented cases we will have tree presentations, one from Norway, one from Sweden and one from Finland on consolidation cases where the process has led to forming the leading sheetfed / digital printing company in each of these countries. It will be interesting to hear which are the similarities and which the differences in what these companies have achieved.

I feel that this seminar will be one of the most informative ones we have arranged lately and definitely something you can not miss. And as always, we have also reserved time to meet old and new friends and exchange thoughts and experiences.

Welcome to Helsinki!