WAN-Ifra’s just-published World Printers Forum Outlook looks with “cautious optimism” to the remainder of 2022.

But with the survey taken late last autumn, there’s an acknowledgement that “for newspapers supply chains that are already under pressure could be even more disrupted”.

Based on a global survey of printing executives who are members of the World Printers Forum and WAN-Ifra’s global media trends panel, the report has the contributions of 73 respondents from 17 countries, most of them newspaper printers with average paid weekly circulations between 100,000 and four million copies. This year’s analysis was provided by former WEF director Manfred Werfel. These are its key takeaways:

Planned investments: The highlight of last year’s edition was the surprising enthusiasm expressed by the printing community to make new as well as retrofit investments despite a difficult 2020. Similar to the previous year when more than 70 per cent of the executives revealed their plans for investments, this year, too, close to 70 per cent of respondents said they would be investing in the coming days. More than 39 per cent of participants plan both new as well as retrofit investments; around 24 per cent plan to focus only on retrofit investments. The share of those who have solely new investment plans is relatively low at 6.1 per cent.

Increasing revenues: While more than 57 per cent of respondents recorded increased revenues in 2021 compared to the previous year, around 67 per cent were hopeful of even greater turnover for 2022.

Circulations up: A significant number of respondents, after seeing increased weekly circulation in 2021, feel certain their numbers will improve further in 2022.

Commercial expansion: The majority of respondents expressed hopes of continuing expansion of business with external customers: 47 percent said they are also printing products such as books, catalogues, magazines, brochures and so on. 53 percent indicated they are printing only newspapers.

Low closures: During the peak of the pandemic (in 2020), several publishing houses shut down some of their printing plants and outsourced the work to external printers. However, the situation seems to have improved since: More than 90 percent of respondents said they had no plans to close printing plants.

Outsourcing printing: Around 44 percent also made it clear they do not intend to outsource printing jobs to external printers in the immediate future. However, almost a third of the participants did seem to be considering the possibility.

In the report’s foreword, current WEF director Ingi Olafsson points to the opportunities the network offers to collaborate across borders “to share best-practice, experience and knowledge to weather these challenging times.”

A webinar is planned to “delve deeper” into the report.