The Print Loop - Week of September 15th

September 16, 2025

📌 Top Highlights

  • Packaging and printing hold steady, but signs of stress are surfacing

  • Technological advances continue to modernize the industry

  • Can’t read small print? Welcome to the middle-aged club

🔍 Deep Dive: Target Report Annual Review

The Target Report Annual Review, released in August, shows stability in the printing, packaging, and graphics industry. However, not all the news is as pretty as Helvetica; some of it is more along the lines of Comic Sans.

The less-than-rosy parts of the report include the following:

  • Commercial printing: Private equity interest has waned, and fewer investors are keeping plants open. 

  • Packaging: The International Paper-DS Smith acquisition triggered US closures and EU divestments.

  • Direct Mail: Bankruptcies and closures highlight underlying stress. Publisher’s Clearing House has even filed for bankruptcy (if only it could have won itself). 

  • Other Closings and Bankruptcies: There have been 61 closures in the past year, the highest since 2014. This is mainly due to the decline of newspapers. 

🖨️ Technology Trailblazers

  • Boone Newsmedia is enjoying a boon in productivity with a little (or a lot) of help from Kodak’s CTP and process-free plates technology. This innovation reduces labor needs by 50% while enhancing speed, print quality, and reliability. 

  • Signarama, a world-leading sign and graphics company, has merged forces with InstallMySigns.com to create a revolutionary real estate sign-ordering process. The result is a dynamic duo-platform that streamlines communication between local installers and real estate offices, centralizing orders, approvals, and tracking.

  • Global Graphics Software has introduced its SmartDFE platform. Full of advanced tools for labels and packaging, this novelty gives service providers more flexibility while improving connectivity.

  • S&G Creative is set to install a new Gallus One digital hybrid press from HEIDELBERG. The new press combines digital inkjet technology with two flexographic units, coil foil, lamination, and rotary die-cutting.

  • Kristal Digital Imaging Centre has installed a Roland VersaObject DG MO-240 flatbed UV press. This allows the company to adopt the concept of ‘home sweet home’ and keep things in-house.

🌲 Going Green

In an effort to eliminate self-adhesive signage waste, Visionary has launched a new Visionary Green recycling program. This program swaps out PVC signage with PVC-free alternatives; it also gathers signs past their prime and recycles them into novel products. The result is less waste in landfills, reduced carbon emissions, eco-friendly circular solutions, and a happier Mother Nature.

🏢 Movers and Shakers

  • FASTSEWN was named a “Company to Watch Out For” by Printing United Alliance; it’s lauded for its system that blends pre-cutting, lockstitch sewing, and precision laser cutting into a single process, offering improved accuracy at lower costs (and helping save humanity from carpal tunnel syndrome). 

  • A Minuteman Press franchisee located in Denver acquired an additional location in Golden, Colorado. Golden is most famous for being home to Coors Brewery. In other words, cheers to direct mailings!

  • Avery Dennison has launched the Supercar Blondie Collection in collaboration with Alex Hirschi, an automove influencer (yes, that’s a thing). As part of this launch, fans were allowed to help choose the wrap for Hirchi’s Rolls-Royce (a nod to the importance of community involvement when employing creativity). Fun fact: While car wraps feel as if they’ve only recently taken off, they actually date back to the olden days of the 1990s.  

🥸 Printing Ponderings

Have you ever wondered why we can’t read small print as we age? The blur of everything from pill bottles to computer screens is a universal experience; nearly everyone past the age of 50 or so possesses this optical oddity. The reason is due to the lens in the eye. While flexible in youth, this lens grows stiffer and less elastic around middle age. This makes it harder to focus when looking at things up close.