PrintingNews.com

For a variety of reasons, Germany is the source of much of the printing equipment sold in North America. Although Gutenberg spawned the printing industry more than 500 years ago in Germany, many of the technical developments which led to the current dominance of offset lithography were in fact the products of North American companies such as ABDick, Davidson, Miehle, and Goss. But most North American manufacturers eventually fell victim to the German attention to design, detail, and precision of mechanical production.

Today, Heidelberg, KBA, and MAN Roland are among the premier manufacturers of printing equipment. And while printing is an important element of the German economy, the strength of the German printing industry is not enough to have permitted the German manufacturers to become dominant.

The German printing industry is structured much like that in North America. The German Printing and Media Industries Federation is an 'association of associations'—the umbrella organization for 12 regional printing associations throughout Germany. Like the Printing Industries of America/Graphic Arts Technical Foundation (PIA/GATF), the German group represents printers across the country. In Germany, however, the companies represented include offset, gravure, letterpress, screen printers, flexographers, bookbinders, and newspapers, whereas the various processes used in the North American market tend to be served by associations focusing on the particular process being used. This segregation has helped each of the processes in the United States compete with each other, but the fragmentation of the industry has weakened the U.S. printing industry when it comes to lobbying governmental agencies and conveying the importance of the industry to the public.

As in North America, the German printing industry is dominated by many small companies. The German association says 95 percent of the printers in Germany have fewer than 100 employees, and most are managed by their owners directly.

Although statistics are not available, consolidation is probably having a greater effect on U.S. printers than their German counterparts because German laws generally favor small businesses and local entrepreneurs.

The German Printing and Media Industries Federation claims that printers with 20 or more employees produce only 2.3 percent of the German gross domestic product, and employ only 2.8 percent of German manufacturing employees. In 2005, the latest year for which detailed statistics are available, the German printers with 20 or more employees logged sales of $21,262 million (at 2005 exchange rates). This was achieved with 116,257 employees, or an average print production of $182,893 per employee.

Insights into the German printing industry from another perspective, and a direct comparison of German and U.S. printers, are provided by a 2006 research monograph produced by the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) Printing Industry Center. Authored by Diana Mross, a graduate student in the RIT School of Print Media, and Sandra Rothenberg, Professor of the RIT College of Business, the report is entitled Formulation and Implementation of Environmental Strategies: A Comparison Between U.S. and German Printing Firms.

According to the RIT report, the 2005 U.S. print industry consisted of 62,355 firms, with sales of approximately $210 billion. On this basis, the 2005 industry consisted of 5.4 times as many printing firms, while, according to the CIA World Factbook, the 2005 U.S. economy was only 5.0 times as large on the basis of GDP based on purchasing power parity. This difference probably most reflects the fact that the United States occupies a huge land area, while Germany is a densely populated country without the vast stretches of plains and deserts, and many small towns in the United States, each requiring a local printer.