For many printers today, one of the biggest problems is how to handle the increasing demand for short run color printing. By “short run” one can mean anything from one copy up to 5,000 copies or more. It depends upon what area of work a printer is comfortable handling with his existing presses. From everything we hear, run lengths are getting shorter and demands for rapid turnaround of work are becoming the norm rather than the exception. Recently Prof. Frank Romano sent me some of the latest figures he has compiled to show how run lengths have been decreasing over the past few years. This is shown in the table below.

From my understanding of these figures, they include all printing and copying in the U.S. commercial printing market. The copying element shows why the run length of one-copy figure is increasing. It is interesting to note that over 60% of all work quoted by Romano is less than 5,000 copies, and is still probably increasing slightly in years to come. The question for printers is how best to handle such work to be profitable and to be able to satisfy customers’ demands for ever faster turnaround of work.

Promoters of digital printing claim that their technology is still best for run lengths to 500 copies and above. What we will see at the forthcoming IPEX print event in the UK in April is offset fighting back against the march of digital.