All of a sudden country’s social media warriors have become experts on supply chains. Minor disruption was to be expected on leaving the EU, but combined with lockdowns because of Covid, there are severe supply issues around customs clearance, around all manner of container shipping, around the production of microprocessors for the auto industry and closer to home, troughs in the supply of paper and substrates for large format inkjet printing. And now, thanks to a breakdown on a web offset press in Yorkshire, the supply chain of pre Christmas advertising print at the industry’s busiest time of year has been hobbled.
Buyers have been chasing any web offset capacity in this country and abroad, pushing web jobs down into sheetfed printers with runs that are not suited to these machines and forcing printers to decide whether to accept a press-filling job or stick with existing loadings, and finding that they cannot place a job which needs web printing. The ins and outs of why a 15-year-old press should choose to break when at its busiest and under pressure, are not within the scope of this comment. It is instructive instead that the knock on effects of print volumes that in years past would have been absorbed in the industry without creating waves, has this time been anything but smooth. Not this time.
This seems like good news for offset litho. There is no way that any number of digital presses, inkjet or otherwise, can take on the work that is currently homeless. This volume needs the sheer productivity of litho printing. However, it is not necessarily good news in the long term. There is a real danger that agencies and brands that cannot get their work printed on time because of the disruption this year, will next time choose to avoid print altogether. Alternatively, on the optimistic side, these customers will learn they have to book jobs weeks and more ahead, bringing some much needed sanity to the market, instead of working with the expectation that some printer will always be willing to take on work at short or no notice.
Warning of bumps in the supply chain
All of a sudden country’s social media warriors have become experts on supply chains. Minor disruption was to be expected on leaving the EU, but combined with lockdowns because of Covid, there are severe supply issues around customs clearance, around all manner of container shipping, around the production of microprocessors for the auto industry and closer to home, troughs in the supply of paper and substrates for large format inkjet printing. And now, thanks to a breakdown on a web offset press in Yorkshire, the supply chain of pre Christmas advertising print at the industry’s busiest time of year has been hobbled.
Buyers have been chasing any web offset capacity in this country and abroad, pushing web jobs down into sheetfed printers with runs that are not suited to these machines and forcing printers to decide whether to accept a press-filling job or stick with existing loadings, and finding that they cannot place a job which needs web printing. The ins and outs of why a 15-year-old press should choose to break when at its busiest and under pressure, are not within the scope of this comment. It is instructive instead that the knock on effects of print volumes that in years past would have been absorbed in the industry without creating waves, has this time been anything but smooth. Not this time.
This seems like good news for offset litho. There is no way that any number of digital presses, inkjet or otherwise, can take on the work that is currently homeless. This volume needs the sheer productivity of litho printing. However, it is not necessarily good news in the long term. There is a real danger that agencies and brands that cannot get their work printed on time because of the disruption this year, will next time choose to avoid print altogether. Alternatively, on the optimistic side, these customers will learn they have to book jobs weeks and more ahead, bringing some much needed sanity to the market, instead of working with the expectation that some printer will always be willing to take on work at short or no notice.
Gareth Ward
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