While most of Europe shares a common market nowadays and trade barriers are low, the printing industry in Europe still consists of many national industries and markets. The industry sizes typically differ with the size of the economy of the country, but there are some interesting deviations. The Nordic countries have a strong economy with a GDP share much higher than their share of the European population. However, the printing industry revenue does lag behind to some extent, a sign of the pressure the printing industry is under in this region.  

Sizing the European print industry can be a tough business, as in some areas the data is not available or in other cases multiple sources exist which contradict each other. Each country has its industry association, as Grakom in Denmark, Graafinen Teollisuus in Finland, Norsk Industri in Norway, and grafiska in Sweden. The national printing associations do publish annual numbers, but not all data is freely accessible. Eurostat, the European organization for statistics, publishes data as well. Definitions, categories, and data points can differ among the organization reporting data. Accordingly, when having a discussion, it is important to keep the data source in mind and the limitations it might have.

The chart below shows Eurostat data for the “Printing and reproduction of recorded media” segment, which includes non-print reproduction. The latter contributes less than 1% to the turnover, however, and its effect is therefore negligible.