Printers Report Plans For Capital Investment

The latest TrendWatch printing survey reports that investment levels in equipment are creeping up. The number-one planned investment for printers is Macintosh workstations at 56%, up 18 percentage points from six months ago. Forces driving this increase, notes TrendWatch, are the introduction of the new G5, as well as QuarkXPress 6 being made OS X-compatible.

The number-two planned investment reported, at 41%, is flat-panel monitors, up 21 percentage points from Spring 2003. The number-three planned investment is PC workstations (32%), followed by servers (21%) and desktop publishing software (21%).

Planned investment in multicolor sheetfed presses is down one percentage point to 4%. TrendWatch reports that the survey data indicates printers are buying small-ticket items like workstations and software.

On the finishing/bindery equipment front, 18% of survey respondents noted plans to invest in this equipment category. Investment in finishing and bindery equipment increased six percentage points to 29% among digital printers.

Another key area of investment reported by survey respondents is training. Overall, more than half (58%) of print and prepress firms surveyed expect to spend money on training in the next 12 months. At same time, 71% of periodical printers, 85% of nonheatset web printers, and 79% of heatset web printers reported plans to invest in training.

The top four training areas reported by survey participants include desktop publishing (48%), customer service (43%), electronic color prepress (37%), and press operation (33%).

Two markets concentrating their spending on desktop publishing training are prepress firms (58%) and quick printers (54%). Periodical printers report focusing their training effort on press operations (45%) and bindery/finishing operations (45%).