The Year Print Shrunk—But Label Plants Kept Getting Bought
In 2020, global print volumes and capex fell, but consolidation didn’t stop. Watching first-year COVID “corporate behavior” up close, mid-sized printers started making their next move less around “what to print” and more around “what to keep, and what to sell.”
In 2020, printing companies around the world hit the brakes at the same time. Yet in one corner, plants kept getting bought; in another, investment froze; and elsewhere, exits suddenly felt defensible. In the year the market contracted, the real story wasn’t demand shift by itself—it was the widening gap in decision speed.
Gathered with AI. Thought through on the shop floor. Written for the future of print.
BPJ WIRE: stories selected and drafted by the BPJ desk from world news, fact-checked against the source ledger — published alongside the editor's own picks.
Coverage: 2020 · Written: Aug 17, 2026. Market reports are written after official statistics for the period are released. US BLS indexes include preliminary values, which may be revised for up to four months.
Translated from Japanese by AI. The Japanese original is authoritative.
In April 2020, trade shows and promotion plans you’d circled in red on the calendar vanished in a batch. The more a printer had built its business around commercial print (brochures, catalogs, direct mail, and the like), the more orders fell off a cliff. Meanwhile, daily necessities and food couldn’t simply stop moving, so packaging and labels held up in a “not everything dropped” way.…
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Sources
- Smithers（記事：covid-19, digitisation... global print） / 2020-11-??
- WhatTheyThink（Smithers推計の引用） / 2021-01-??
- Smithers（The Future of Print Equipment to 2026 紹介記事） / 2021-06-01
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 生産者物価指数（系列 WPU0913・公開APIから取得）
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 生産者物価指数（系列 WPU0911・公開APIから取得）
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 生産者物価指数（系列 WPU0914・公開APIから取得）
- SEC（International Paper 2020 Form 10-K） / 2021-02-19
- Fintel（IP 10-Kの転載/引用。原典は10-K） / 2021-02-19
- The Target Report（2020年M&Aログ）
- BOBST IR（2020 full year results） / 2021-02-??
- SEC（Xerox 2020 Form 10-K） / 2021-??-??
- Canon（Annual Report 2020 PDF）
- Ricoh（Integrated Report 2020）
- Keypoint Intelligence（ブログ） / 2020-??-??
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