Wide Format and Signage Demand- and technology-side drivers for 2022

In the year of our COVID 2020, wide-format printing was the saving grace of many a print service provider, who, with traditional vertical markets and customers shut down, turned to COVID-related signage as a stopgap measure to at least keep some of the lights on. Now that the pandemic has…well, not exactly ended, but at least ebbed to the point where shut-down markets are now open, where do wide-format printing and signage production stand? And what does the market look like for wide format and signage as we head into 2022?

We can identify some distinct trends and market drivers, dividing them into “demand side” and “supply side” or “technology side.” First, let’s look at what is happening on the demand side.

Wide-format printing was obviously in high demand even before the pandemic, and while those new COVID-specific applications emerged in 2020, demand for COVID signage has waned, although not entirely disappeared. On a more macro level, the pandemic has had some specific effects on businesses—some good, some bad—which have some repercussions for signage and display graphics providers.

New Business Formation

It’s a post-pandemic phenomenon that The Economist called “bezonkers,” as in “New business formation in America goes bezonkers” (https://econ.st/3FV8Gkv). See the chart of new business applications (Figure 1).

Figure 1. New Business Applications. Source: U.S. Census Bureau

While some of these new businesses replaced those that failed during 2020, economists see it as one of the consequences of "The Great Resignation." People taking stock of their lives and careers during the pandemic and pursuing a dream of business ownership, or at the very least of not being stuck in a job one hates. How much of this will persist beyond 2021/2022 remains to be seen.

However, according to Forbes (https://bit.ly/3G8dFP1), analyzing the July business application figures, still more encouraging is the reported rise in what the Census Bureau calls “high propensity applications,” by which it means those new businesses with a high likelihood of supporting a payroll. These, though only some one-third of total applications, also jumped some 1.2% from June’s level for the nation as a whole and had a similar regional pattern to applications overall, with the largest proportion in the South and the strongest monthly jumps in the Northeast and the West.

What does all this have to do with wide-format printing? New businesses need a lot of resources and other materials to get started, a lot of it involving various kinds of print, and often including signage and other kinds of display graphics, both interior and exterior. This presents opportunities for display graphics and signage producers.

However, what percentage of these businesses will be home-based, or at least not need the kinds of retail or office graphics a dedicated business location would require? Without a deep dive into the specific NAICS categories in which these businesses are forming, the best bet is to check your local or regional new business registrations. A good place to start—and this is fodder for future articles—is the "Census Bureau’s Business Formation Statistics" (https://bit.ly/3lPonlg), which does indeed break down new businesses by industry. We’re getting a little afield of the scope of this article, but suffice to say, the top sector for new business creation is “retail trade,” followed by “administrative and support.” (See Figure 2.)

Figure 2. Monthly Business Applications by NAICS Sector. Source: U.S. Census Bureau.

Which also brings up a related issue…

Work From Home

It also still remains to be seen to what extent “work from home” will be a major factor as the pandemic recedes into the past (should it ever). Some statistics worth thinking about include (https://bit.ly/3voagGu):

⦁ Upwork estimates that one in four Americans, over 26% of the American workforce, will be working remotely through 2021. They also estimate that 22% of the workforce (36.2 million Americans) will work remotely by 2025.

⦁ Globally, 16% of companies are fully remote, according to an Owl labs study. This same study found that about 62% of workers aged 22 to 65 claim to work remotely at least occasionally.

⦁ This study also found that 44% of companies do not allow remote work of any kind.

The point is, for all the talk of “work from home,” the office is not going away any time soon, although it certainly will change. In what way? No one is quite sure yet. Offices will probably be smaller, and we may be in store for a major downsizing of businesses as they seek smaller square-footage locations.

So the sign and display needs of businesses throughout the economy are going to be in a state of flux for the foreseeable future—and that’s not necessarily a bad thing for sign and display graphics providers. Probably not as much as had been anticipated in mid-2020, but these are changes that are worth staying on top of.

Which leads us to…

Construction and Architecture

One market that is inextricably linked to signage and display graphics is architecture and construction. As goes construction, so goes signage to a very great extent. As this issue was going to press, the International Sign Association (ISA) released its "Q3 Sign Industry Quarterly Economic Report" (https://bit.ly/30Dn5Bw), and—first off—ISA’s analysts at IHS Markit expect that the supply chain issues that had been plaguing virtually every sector to start to clear up as we head into 2022. They also expect prices to come down.

“Paper and packaging prices are set to decrease in late 2021 and through 2022 as input costs fall. Globally, steel production is fully recovered and exceeds pre-COVID-19 output, allowing inventories to near being fully restocked. It is still going to get worse before it gets better, but price relief will come by late 2021 or early 2022.”

God willin’ and the COVID don’t rise, of course.

The IHS Markit analysts are not especially bullish on the architectural signage market.

“Nonresidential structures construction spending declined during the second quarter [of 2021], falling 11.5% y/y. The lower levels of activity in the structures market occurred primarily because of commercial construction declines of 12.4% y/y during the quarter. Driving the decline was the lodging component, which fell 30.1% y/y.”

They anticipate the 2022 growth to be slightly under the prevailing growth rate trend.

So these were some demand-side trends that have been impacting wide-format, display and signage, and will continue to. What about technology trends?

Wide format is a pretty mature part of the print market, and has been for a while. We have seen few revolutionary new wide-format technologies in recent years, with most of the changes being more incremental, with faster speeds, better quality, a greater diversity of vendor product portfolios and different kind of inks and substrates.

Automation

We are finally seeing automation make serious inroads into wide-format printing, driven by the same factors that have driven the push towards automation in other sectors of the industry—namely, the need to get jobs in and out faster, labor shortages and the need to reduce human touchpoints. Software is playing a role, with nesting optimization having been a hot prepress software feature for a couple of years, but we have started to see more and more wide-format printers—typically flatbeds—support the ability to add robotics for automatic loading and/or unloading of boards.

The Canon Arizona series and the high-end Inca Onset have had this capability for a while, and recently EFI and Mimaki, to name two vendors, have explicitly cited the ability of their new printers to integrate directly with third-party robotics and other kinds of automation equipment. Robot arms don’t come cheap, but if demand starts to pick up and costs come down, we may see more wide-format shops arming themselves.

Improved productivity can also be achieved with some unique solutions. One is Canon’s FLOW technology used on its Arizona line of flatbeds. It comprises a zoneless vacuum system that applies suction only where it is required, regardless of how much of the table is covered or uncovered by media. At the same time, three-sided pneumatic registration pins allow edge-to-edge printing as well as the ability to align the substrate to either the left or right edge—or both edges—of the vacuum table. The result is the elimination of the need for masking, which can be a time-consuming part of wide-format production.

Environment

Environmental concerns are continuing to be important, as end users and customers increasingly want to green their own supply chains. This is mostly playing out in the consumables space, with more eco-friendly inks and especially substrates starting to hit the market. As more and more sign and display graphics providers move into markets like health care and education, they find the need to use compliant inks and substrates. Elsewhere, there really isn’t a mad rush to go green—price still remains of paramount importance—but sustainability is becoming a top-of-mind issue.

Ability to Branch into New Markets

For a while, wide format was the new market that commercial printers were urged to move into—and they did. Interestingly, we are now finding that the reverse is proving to be the case: shops that were predominantly wide-format-based are now starting to add small-format commercial print, doing this either via partnerships, acquisitions or buying the equipment (the same three strategies that commercial printers used to get into wide format).

Other markets also await. 3D printing has been lukewarmly received by print providers, but remains an untapped market for sign and display providers. Related to 3D is direct-to-object printing, and we are seeing UV LED units grow from small “benchtop” units to much larger devices that support larger and even heavier objects. The specialty printing market has been a high-growth area, and will continue to be a hotspot as better inks allow for direct inkjet printing on a greater range of materials with minimal fuss. As events start to come back, these kinds of items will be in greater demand.

While packaging in all its various incarnations has been touted as the next great adventure for printers, our annual surveys have not found too many commercial or wide-format shops taking the plunge. There still remain vast opportunities for print businesses to produce short- (or shortish-) run packaging options for small and mid-sized product manufacturers. The advantage that wide-format shops have is that a lot of the equipment they already have—namely UV flatbed devices—are well-suited toward at least some kinds of packaging production, so it wouldn’t require a major investment in new equipment to at least dip a toe in the water, and then scale up if a packaging strategy takes off.

Into the New Year

As we found during the pandemic (and some found even before the pandemic), the ability to be versatile (or what Preston Herrin calls “agile”) can put shops in a position of being able to quickly adapt to a changing market—and we found in 2020 that things can change “in a New York minute.” This made good business sense at the best of times, and even better sense in the worst. It’s best to be prepared in either event.

This Year’s Models

Here is a rundown of some of the major product releases from 2021. For space reasons, we couldn't include every release. Full details of all these products are available at whattheythink.com and/or printingnews.com.

In the CNC router space, AAG Tailored Cutting Solutions announced its new AXYZ METALWORKER and WARDJet M-Series. Designed for metal cutting applications, METALWORKER can handle aluminum, copper, zinc, metal composites, mild steels and stainless composite, while the M-Series waterjet is a high-speed high-acceleration large-format solution for large and multiple sheet production.

Caption: AAG Tailored Cutting Solutions’  AXYZ METALWORKER CNC router.

Agfa launched the Avinci CX3200 dye-sublimation roll-to-roll printer that can print either directly to textile or on transfer paper. Designed for soft signage, it can create textile prints up to 3.2 m wide. Agfa also released its “new flagship,” the 3.3m Jeti Tauro H3300 UHS LED flatbed, targeted to the high end of the sign and display market.

Canon launched the new Arizona 135 GT UV flatbed printer, capable of handling substrates up to 49.2 x 98.4 inches and up to 2.0 inches thick. Canon also expanded its 64-inch UVgel-based roll-to-roll Colorado line with the lower-cost Colorado 1630.

Caption: Canon Colorado 1630.

EFI launched its new VUTEk XT, redesigned, next-generation successor to the EFI VUTEk HS series of hybrid high-volume printers which can print more than 375 boards per hour. EFI has also ported the single-pass-enabled speed of its Nozomi platform to display graphics with a display graphics printer based on the EFI Nozomi C18000 Plus printer for direct-to-board corrugated packaging production. This 63-inch wide printer can print at speeds up to 1,000 sheets or boards per hour. EFI also introduced a new high-volume EFI VUTEk Q series roll-to-roll UV LED printers, comprising the 198-inch wide VUTEk Q5r and 138-inch wide VUTEk Q3r. On the software side of things, EFI has also released its EFI Fiery XF/Fiery proServer version 7.3 and EFI Fiery Prep-it workflow software designed for display graphics and industrial printing.

Caption: EFI’s Nozomi-based single-pass for display graphics printer.

Epson introduced the next generation of SureColor T-Series printers for the AEC markets, featuring six 24-, 36- and 44-inch models.

Fujifilm launched the next-gen Acuity Ultra R2, available in 3.2m and 5m versions, and the new Acuity Prime, which can print up to 4 feet by 8 feet and 2 inches thick, featuring the new FUJIFILM Uvijet HM ink system, formulated to provide excellent adhesion to a broad range of substrates with a wide color gamut.

Caption: Fujifilm Acuity Prime.

HP launched a new Latex portfolio, comprising four different 64-inch-wide units, the HP Latex 700, HP Latex 700W, HP Latex 800 and HP Latex 800W. “W” stands for “White” (these are the first Latex units in this class to utilize white ink) and these units come with an option for printing white ink, long on users’ wish lists for Latex.

Caption: HP’s new Latex portfolio.

LogoJET launched two new next-generation food-safe printers, the FSR30 and FSR90 printers, designed to print photo-quality full-color images on foods. The FSR30 can print on items up to 2.5 inches thick, and the FSR90 can print on items up to 6 inches thick. 

Caption: LogoJET FSR30 food-safe printer.

Mimaki launched four new UJF Series printers—the UJF-7151 Plus II, and three new UJF-MkII e Series models—designed for direct-to-object printing, featuring a larger print space and support for heavier objects. The company also added two new LED-UV large-format flatbed inkjet printers, the 2.5m x 1.3m x 6cm JFX600-2513 and the JFX550-2513, based on Mimaki’s seventh-generation UV print technology.

Caption: Mimaki UJF-7151. 

Onyx Graphics announced its ONYX 21.1, the latest version of the company’s flagship wide-format RIP and print workflow software, featuring an all-new PDF Soft Proof workflow and Print Label Cut Path functionality. RGB soft proofs can be easily generated on the fly or automated using ONYX Quick Sets for a quick visual reference of final output before printing. Onyx also launched ONYX Go, a new subscription RIP solution that offers a month-to-month, no-contract, full-featured ONYX RIP with up to four Adobe PDF Print Engines (APPE), Job Editor to edit files before printing, unlimited roll-to-roll cutter support for complete Print-and-Cut workflows, and supports up to two printers.

Roland DGA VersaSTUDIO BN-20A desktop printer/cutter, a CMYK-only “business in a box” for $4,995. Roland also launched its new VersaUV LEC2 S-Series UV flatbeds designed for direct-to-object printing, available in 64-inch and 30-inch widths. As if that weren’t enough, on the rollfed side, Roland also introduced its new 64-inch VersaUV LEC2-640 and 30-inch VersaUV LEC2-330, next-generation UV printer/cutters designed for label, packaging, sign, display and interior décor production. On the finishing side, Roland has also added the 64-inch GR2-640 and 54-inch GR2-540 large-format vinyl cutters to its CAMM-1 series.

Caption: Roland VersaSTUDIO BN-20A desktop printer/cutter.

SAi released Flexi 21, the latest version of its flagship signmaking software. Amongst many other features, it now supports multi-layer/white and varnish ink layered printing, variable-data printing, jig templates for direct-to-object printing, custom inksets and G7 Certification.

In the digital signage arena, Sharp NEC Display Solutions partnered with Avery Dennison to introduce ActiveScene, which combines Avery Dennison’s Vela Dynamic System and NEC projection technology, to provide a comprehensive A/V solution to transform existing windows into engaging, eye-catching displays.

Caption: Sharp NEC and Avery Dennison’s ActiveScene.

swissQprint flatbed generation 4 features new printheads for a maximum resolution of 1350 dpi and ultra-high-precision droplet placement.