Graphic Arts Industry Enterprises in Croatia

The graphic arts industry includes graphic arts print, often also termed commercial print (although including publication and specialty print in this overview), as well as newspaper print, prepress and postpress companies. Since 2012 the number of printing establishments in Western Europe shows a steady decline—the effect of ongoing consolidation in the industry.

Central and Eastern European countries did fare better, however. The number of establishments in Croatia declined on average by 1.2% from 2012 to 2022 only and even showed some growth since 2018. The forecast expects the number of companies to remain essentially flat. Croatia is profiting from printing volumes shifting from Western Europe to the CEE due to lower labor costs while being much closer to the end markets than e.g. the Far East. Croatia had a somewhat slower start as a print product exporter but is catching up now. This will mainly affect revenues, which are expected to continue to rise. The growth will slow however compared to the 4.2% annual revenue growth between 2012 and 2022. This will lead to the number of companies staying flat and even declining later in the forecast. Overall, the number of graphic arts establishments is likely to decline slightly from about 900 in 2012 to about 760 by 2030.

Source: digitalprintexpert.de / 2024

As in all countries, the majority of companies in the graphic arts industry in Croatia are small. Close to 90% have less than 10 employees (even after adjusting for dormant or non-productive companies). Less than 3% of all enterprises have more than 50 employees, which is below the European average, although there are some large companies often with an export focus.

There are other important print producers that are, statistically speaking, not part of the graphic arts industry. Those are folding carton, flexible packaging, corrugated, and label printing, plus photocopy services and in-house printing. This adds another 225 print enterprises in 2022—totalling about a third of the number of graphic arts industry enterprises in Croatia.

Further Industry Data

This article is part of a bi-weekly series of pieces looking at print industry data in 24 European countries. The next article will feature Czechia. A European overview can be found here: https://whattheythink.com/data/119946-sizing-european-print-industry/

A breakout of all segments by country and timelines for the number of establishments, revenue, and employment in the graphic arts industry and other print segments can be found in the 2024 European Print Industry Sizing report. The report also features the number of companies by size class and country. The report can be purchased from the WhatTheyThink store: https://store.whattheythink.com/downloads/european-print-industry-sizing-2024/.

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