In 2024, global print demand drifted toward “the politics of boxes” and bigger buyers
Behind drupa’s glow, buyers began locking specifications and buying units. As labels and packaging take center stage, which customers’ purchasing terms should mid-sized printers retool their equipment and sales teams around?
In 2024, the print market wore a neutral face—neither recession nor boom. But line the year up month by month and the center of gravity quietly moved. It was a year when packaging regulation as a political event, and consolidation among corrugated giants, started changing specifications and purchasing units at the same time.
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: 2024 · Written: Aug 16, 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.
Sometimes you sit in a corrugated quoting meeting and print doesn’t come up until the very end. The first agenda items are: “Will this package survive regulation?” “Can we keep supply from stopping?” “Can we standardize the spec globally?” Ink density and halftone dot gain come later. In 2024, that order shifted from “exception” to “default.”…
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Sources
- Smithers（Packaging and labels to power future expansion in world print…） / 2025-01
- 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）
- Council of the EU（Press release） / 2024-03-04
- European Parliament（Plenary news/Agenda） / 2024-04-24
- Smurfit Westrock（Press release） / 2024-07-05
- Investegate（Mondi Final Results掲載）
- U.S. SEC（PCA Form 10-K）
- BOBST（Ad hoc release）
- Japan Paper Association（2024 statistics PDF）
- 日本新聞協会（pressnet.or.jp） / 2025
- 日本包装技術協会（JPI）
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