Time is short, so is everything else

As a recovery of sorts gets underway we must prepare for a series of shortages, with capacity, consumables, and especially labour in demand. This is already starting to occur. There are reports about delayed delivery of display materials, in Germany printers have struggled to get paper. And when consumables can be obtained, prices are going up.
We have come across delays in delivery from trade printers experiencing a sharp increase in demand following the most recent step in opening up the economy. So capacity, substrates and consumables are suffering shortages. But none will match the shortage of skilled labour. Many people who worked in print 18 months ago are now in the food supply chain, stacking shelves; they are working for recycling businesses; they have decided to retire after years of humping tonnes of paper a day.
And these folk are not going to return. It is not just in print. Many industries are suffering, notably transportation, and the shortages will be increasingly apparent as demand climbs. If there simply will not be staff to carry out the pre pandemic jobs, printers must find other ways to get work processed. That must include automation wherever possible; it must involve handling systems including robots, it must involve a different type of employee – someone capable of understanding the challenges and devising ways to address them. If not printers will go out of business, not because they don’t have the work, but because they are simply not capable of completing it.

Gareth Ward