For many years WhatTheyThink has been running regular articles on sizing the US printing industry, with a comprehensive overview of the total market, looking at several sub-segments, and the drivers behind demographic changes in those segments. Probably many wondered if there is information available on other regions. Time to give it a start: we’ll begin with Europe.

Getting good data on the European printing industry is hampered by several facts—and not just because of the upheavals wrought by COVID-19. First, there is no unambiguous definition of “Europe.” To make the sizing a bit easier, I exclude Russia and the CIS states, as well as the European part of Turkey. Another challenge is that every country has a national statistical office—in its local language. Fortunately, at least all countries in the European Union report to Eurostat (the statistical body of the European Union), but a closer look at the data reveals that standards differ, as do the timeliness and completeness of data. Furthermore, the European statistical classification system has far less detail than the US system. Besides prepress and postpress companies, there are only two types of printing companies accounted for: “newspaper printers” and “all other printers!” Some kinds of print establishments like label and packaging printers and copy shops are found in other business segments outside of printing. Establishments like in-house print or data center printing are not accounted for at all. It should not be a surprise that industry numbers published differ considerably.

To put the printing industry sizing into perspective, it is good to have a look at some base stats as well. When comparing Europe and the US, Europe has a noticeably higher population, by about 40%. The GDP for Europe falls behind, however. While some countries (Switzerland, Norway, Luxemburg) have a very high per capita GDP, it is much lower in many other countries.