Offset's loss isn't necessarily inkjet's gain

Offset has been losing page volume for years, while inkjet presses keep gaining ground. That sounds like a simple handover, but it isn’t. A market forecast shows how commercial and publishing print is being reshaped, and why Europe is going its own way.

“Running an offset press with 8 towers and a coater has about 10,000 variables in it.” So says one offset press manufacturer, quoted by analyst Marco Boer of I.T. Strategies in his latest study. Yet many commercial printers are now run by private equity managers, and according to the unnamed manufacturer, they “are not printing people, and they manage the press by a spreadsheet. If they see it is taking more than 5 minutes and 50 sheets between jobs, they think the press is broken.” This, the manufacturer concludes, is what is clearing the way for production inkjet. That may be putting it strongly, but on one point Boer’s figures bear the manufacturer out: whether a print provider gives up offset and invests in inkjet often depends less on the printing technology itself than on the numbers.

Offset is losing pages, but hardly any to inkjet

Boer converts print volumes into A4 simplex-equivalent pages so that the processes can be compared. For offset document and publishing pages, excluding newsprint, he expects a decline of around 4% a year to 2031, from 4,235 billion to 3,323 billion pages worldwide. Over the same period, continuous feed inkjet grows by around 3% a year, from 523 billion to 633 billion pages. Offset therefore loses just over 900 billion pages, while continuous feed inkjet gains around 110 billion.

Boer draws a clear conclusion: inkjet printing is not a direct replacement for offset. Offset is declining independently of how fast inkjet pages grow. The core reason, he says, is that much of the content is shifting to electronic alternatives that are considered less expensive and timelier than print. For the offset pages that remain, inkjet ink is simply too expensive. By 2031, Boer projects that continuous feed inkjet will account for about 13% of all commercial and publishing pages, and cut-sheet inkjet for only about 2%.

Inkjet wins where it adds value or saves cost

Where inkjet does take pages from offset, Boer sees two reasons. One is high value, which he is careful to distinguish from embellishment: it means content that is relevant, produced in the quantities needed and delivered exactly when needed. The other is cost savings, which inkjet offers on short runs and in applications with low ink coverage such as book printing.

Graphic arts pages are projected to grow fastest, at around 14% a year to 2031. Boer uses the term for continuous feed presses that can print well over 30% ink coverage on coated offset stock with near-offset image quality. Transaction pages such as invoices and bank statements, on the other hand, are set to fall by around 5% a year, which weighs down overall growth. All in all, Boer has lowered his page volume growth forecast for continuous feed inkjet from 7% a year in his 2024 forecast to 3%. Rising costs for paper, postage and labour are running into flat print budgets.

When the operator retires, so does the press

For the years beyond 2026, Boer still sees a positive outlook for inkjet presses, and he gives three core reasons. One is people: “Every time an offset press operator retires, so does the offset press.” Production inkjet is much simpler to operate and can be run by operators who are more readily available. For many printers, that alone carries a lot of weight. In a survey by the German printing and media association BVDM in autumn 2024, two thirds of the German printing companies questioned said they were affected by the skills shortage.

Manufacturers are losing service technicians to retirement too, and it has been challenging to find, train and retain new ones. At the same time, as operators become more familiar with the technology, print providers are taking on more of the regular maintenance themselves. Maintenance revenue for continuous feed inkjet manufacturers fell by 8.5% from 2024 to 2025, partly because the machines are getting more reliable and printheads are lasting longer.

Shorter runs change the maths

Another reason is run length. As paper and postage costs continue to rise, run lengths continue to come down, and these runs fit better on inkjet than on offset. The third reason is what Boer calls value-add: the ability to make last-minute changes, to increase or decrease a print run at no extra cost, to offer versioning and even personalisation. At the same time, commercial printing is shrinking and consolidating, and larger printers are taking on volume with higher-productivity systems.

One big barrier remains: ink pricing. To replace offset presses on a one-to-one basis, inkjet ink needs to be competitive with offset costs, including plates and set-up. In his view, this issue might not be resolved until all run lengths have become micro-runs.

Books show how the shift plays out

Book printing shows what this looks like in practice. Books are the largest segment for continuous feed inkjet, accounting for an estimated 38% of all pages. That is because most book pages are monochrome with low ink coverage, so the cost gap between offset and inkjet is much narrower than in other applications.

The trend is particularly visible in the US, where ever more titles are being published in ever shorter runs, and those are often a better fit for digital printing than for offset. Amazon sells more than 55% of all trade books in the US, and Boer estimates that close to 20% of all book pages sold by Amazon are now inkjet printed. The latest generation of wide-web inkjet presses can print an incredible 5,000 books an hour. Older offset book presses, meanwhile, are being phased out as spare parts and operators run short.

Europe runs fewer shifts

The US picture does not simply carry over to Europe, though. Many European printers run one to one and a half shifts rather than three, which makes it harder to keep high-productivity inkjet presses consistently busy. Europe also has smaller, more fragmented markets with fewer large, homogeneous customers. That matters for manufacturers: serving Europe takes a large enough installed base to cover the cost of a service infrastructure. Boer cites this as one of the key reasons why Fujifilm exited the European production inkjet market in 2026. Whether flexible, smaller systems will win out in Europe over large high-volume presses therefore remains an open question.

In book printing, Europe has an additional factor to deal with: the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). It requires certain products, including paper and board, to be made from deforestation-free, legally sourced and traceable materials. As things stand, it applies from 30 December 2026 to large and medium-sized companies and from 30 June 2027 to small and micro-enterprises. Boer expects this to put more pressure on publishers to produce books more accurately to forecast, which favours inkjet, where books can be produced on demand. Established press manufacturers are also coming under price pressure because, according to Boer, Chinese-made presses have gained a foothold in some European markets, mainly in book printing.

Direct mail works differently in Europe as well. Strict privacy laws make it hard to personalise mailings, which is one reason why unaddressed, offset-printed flyers remain popular. According to Boer, postage in Europe also tends to be about twice as high as in the US.

Outlook: more uptime rather than more nozzles

Over the coming years, Boer expects a shift in development priorities. Rather than adding more brute power, such as extra nozzles and drying capacity, manufacturers are likely to put more into software that increases uptime and capacity utilisation. In the longer term, the focus is on new inks and drying technologies that open inkjet up beyond paper to packaging, wide-format graphics and textiles.

For printers, the next investment therefore hinges less on the printing process than on their own order book: how small will run lengths get, and who will be running the press in ten years’ time? At drupa in May 2028, visitors will be able to see first-hand how far these developments have come.