Graphic Arts Industry Enterprises in Hungary

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.

Most Central and Eastern European countries did fare better. However, Hungary only did slightly better than the average. The number of establishments in Hungary declined on average by 2% from 2012 to 2022, while all of Europe had an annual drop of 2.5%. Numbers in Hungary stabilized in recent years, however, and showed a slight increase after a decline in 2020 to about 1,600. The forecast expects the number of companies to remain essentially flat with a slight decline of 0.3% until 2030. Hungary is benefitting from printing volumes shifting from Western Europe to CEE due to lower labor costs, while being much closer to the end markets than e.g. the Far East. This will mainly affect revenues, which are expected to continue to rise, while the number of establishments will shrink slightly due to consolidation. Overall, the number of graphic arts establishments is likely to decline slightly from about 2,000 in 2012 to slightly more than 1,500 by 2030.

Source: digitalprintexpert.de / 2024

As in all countries, the majority of companies in the graphic arts industry in Hungary are small. About 87% have less than 10 employees (even after adjusting for dormant or non-productive companies). Close to 3% of all enterprises have more than 50 employees, which is below the European average, although there are some very 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 692 print enterprises in 2022—adding up to about a 30% of the number of graphic arts industry enterprises in Hungary.

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 Ireland. A European overview can be found here.

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.

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