Enthralling growth of Turkish printing sector

Enthralling growth of Turkish printing sector
----By Sezai Akciyer and A. Tamer Ardıç-----
The printing sector in Turkey is increasing its capacity and developing its technology very fast. Last year, the date we gathered for Printing Guide for Turkey showed that about 8 % of the printing houses had in excess of 10 units of offset presses. There were investments that altered this picture completely in a year. The number of units that reflected into the pages of Matbaa Haber exceeds 250. Within these the number of four-colours exceeds 20 and the number of five-colours exceeds 10. Additionally, the number of machines with more than six colours, and with eight or ten-colour systems also exceeds 10.
During the last two years, many brand new and second hand offset presses entered the sector. It is a commonplace information that the printing shops in Anatolia are also investing to second hand web offset machines.
The well-founded change in the sector goes back to the second half of the nineties. Then, the number of printing houses that had multicolour presses was very few even in the large cities. After drupa 95 and TUYAP’s seventh Printing and Paper Industries Fair that was held in Istanbul, four-colour and two-colour press sales started to accelerate. However, the firms investing to second hand single colour presses were making up a majority.
Approaching 2000, the Marmara earthquake and then followed by the three-year recession of the early 2000s slowed down this pace but could not stop it. Even if the second hand market still dominated the sector, post 2003 possibilities of new financing methods such as leasing, etc., the brand new presses started to be bought heavily. After 2004, it became a usual scene in the investments at the centres outside of the large cities to see four or five-colour press investments. In some leading cities of Anatolia, printing shops started to buy five or six-colour plus dispersion lacquer or UV configurations.
Prepress: CtP is fast increasing
The CtP systems were met with some hesitation in the early years. A similar situation has occurred earlier towards the end of eighties when CtF technology was introduced. Today, if we include the CtCP system that uses conventional plates, we see that there are about 250 CtP systems in operation. Even if film is still used by many printers, such places too obtain digital plates for precise work. Nobody have doubts about the quality of CtP technology any longer.
The presence of CtP systems in the future plans of many printing shops that invest to multi-colour systems for the first time shows that the potential in the market will expand in the medium term.
Faster and economic printing...
The high capacity of especially the sheet offset machine park in Turkey and the cost lowering effect of this is usually pronounced. In such a situation, the competitive superiority of the machines that have new technology with improved digital functions and high automation become important. The leading printers in Istanbul replace their 4 or 5-colour presses that ar about 5-10 years of age with the latest technology machines. At the present, there are three printing houses in Istanbul that use ten-colour machines. There are those among the large commercial and packaging printing houses that renew their machine parks which prefer to include more than one six-colour plus UV or dispersion lacquer machines in a span of couple of months. The printers focus on faster and more economic production in their investment decisions.
The large printing houses that may be branded to be of industrial size have started to procure six-colour or more configurations that are suitable to process PVC and flexible media like cardboard and In Mold Label, or 8-10 colour double side perfector machines that can print on both sides in single pass directed to magazine market besides the high volume sheet offset presses. If one said that an eight-colour machine was to be installed in the middle of Anatolia, at a city like Kayseri, this could have been regarded as a news that wanted to create sensation. Nowadays, nobody is surprised to hear such things knowing the growing industry and diversifying needs.
When one discusses the future of the offset printing in Turkey, the first thing that comes to mind is the fact that especially the small printers have aged machine parks and there is a serious prospect for growth and renewals.
Fear of idle capacity in post press...
The growing offset printing capacity in Turkey is forcing the printing houses to invest into post press. The number of automatic binding lines in the sector is on the rise. In the large cities, the new or second hand binding lines are being set up in printing shops with multi-colour presses. In Anatolia, on the other hand, the small printing houses prefer small collation and stitching machines. In places where the printers are congregated in the form of industrial sites, the post press services are usually procured from outside, from the specialised post press shops. However, the number and capacities of such places do not always suffice, especially when the demand shows an increase.
Even if the printers imagine systems where all the processes from the order acceptance to deliver yare combined under one roof in their place, it is not always feasible as the cost of automatic machines doesn’t conform with the possibility of idle periods and/or the high cost of labour when manual methods are opted for.
The future promises potential for digital
It was observed that the market expanden in both digital machines that use toner or ink and inkjet printers for outdoor and indoor jobs after 2003. While the printers following the development of the digital machines were undecided where to use these machines, their larger customers such as banks, hotels, large companies, public establishments have already started to buy multi-function B&W or colour digital printers. In this phase, the printing shops started to loose small volume customers for letterheads, visiting cards and even some brochures. The old customers procuring their own digital systems aside, there were now new “copy centres” popping up everywhere for daily small jobs and as they could be set up anywhere; proximity was also affecting the shift of business to such places.
Digital systems were started to be used by the advertisement agencies and printing shops in 1997. The process that started with digital proofing devices is being replaced by an industrial process which can offer large scale digital solutions with the use of high capacity, high quality digital machines with varying capabilities such as Xerox iGen3, Xeikon, Kodak NexPress, HP Indigo, Canon, Konica Minolta and Océ. The printing shops are using the digital systems as elements that support their commercial printing as their main line of business while putting together marketing teams among their staff that are experts in digital printing aspects, thereby expanding their clientele that has only digital printing needs.
The market for high capacity digital printing is just about arising in Turkey. The firms investing in this respect are doing so in order to be a step ahead of the competition. While the office and stationary market is continuing to grow fast, in the small printing shops in Anatolia the medium and small capacity digital printing machines are opted for short volume jobs.
In the wide format digital printing machines market, the surge for investment through the low cost machines with Far East origin experienced in the recent years is expected to be replaced by a phase where relatively better quality machines with longer economic life will be preferred. Sign Istanbul fair that will start on 29 November will likely give an indication as to the size of developing potential in this area.
There are still question marks concerning the DI technology. There is only one printing shop that has a Heidelberg Speedmaster DI press in Turkey.
In concluding, it can comfortably be stated that in parallel with the growth of the economy in Turkey, the digital printing is likely to have promising future.