Frank Romano: And I would like a very special person to introduce himself.

Manuel Trevisan: Hi, my name is Manuel Trevisan, I come from Italy. I work in a printing shop as a Technical Director and I know Frank because I went to RIT.

Frank Romano: And I wanted to ask him, how the Italian printing market was doing?

Manuel Trevisan: Well, the Italian market is facing, as most European market, a lot of challenges. Some consolidation, some closing because printing volume is going down. So, companies are trying to move either by consolidating or by creating an aggregation. Being also separate company because Italy is owned in the market, but very, very small company. Some are mom and shops.

Frank Romano: So like many countries, there are a lot of small printers as you would . . .

Manuel Trevisan: Yep.

Frank Romano: And I would imagine they’re using mostly digital printing.

Manuel Trevisan: No, actually they are mostly offset printers.

Frank Romano: Oh, that’s very interesting.

Manuel Trevisan: So a lot are starting to move to digital now, but there are many of the traditional family-owned business that are offset, some still with typography print. Very few of them, but some still exist.

Frank Romano: How had digital done with the larger printers? Anything?

Manuel Trevisan: Yeah. There are a lot of larger printers that are investing and many others that are looking to invest and create full digital systems.

Frank Romano: As we move forward I’m sure the market’s going to come back to some extent although print volume is down, it’ll start to rebound to some extent with certain printed products. Are printers willing to make the investment in the new technologies that they need, not only in digital but also in new offset presses for instance?

Manuel Trevisan: Yes. Actually the smart company that I see surviving; this is my personal opinion, are already looking and making investments. That’s what makes them lively and really move forward. But some that have been stopping with all their investment and now they are facing a lot of trouble because a lot of the new productivity come from integration and automation. And some of these companies have been not investing at all for two, three years, so now they in big trouble.

Frank Romano: How’s the newspaper industry doing in Italy?

Manuel Trevisan: It’s struggling quite a lot because most of the newspapers in Italy but around the world, they’re based in advertisement. And they lost a lot of their revenue because of the recession and because of the new medium, so they are struggling.

Frank Romano: So it sounds like Italia has many of the same problems that the United States and the UK and many other developed countries have at this stage. And my feeling is that we will work our way out of it, it’ll take some period of time, but I would see that that is going to happen.

Manuel Trevisan: Yeah. It’s definitely. And you know, one of the biggest things is more and more the company in Italy that’s been a little bit different than others are becoming international, they are more aware of what’s going on, new trends and new technology and they are also enriching their company with people coming from other side of Europe and also from other countries outside Europe. So...

Frank Romano: This is great. Well, thank you very much, Manuel. Thank you for being here.

Manual Trevisan: Thank you.