2025 Predictions: Streamlining, Sustainability, and Software to Dominate

Nir Zarmi

Not so much a change, but a continuation of industry challenges will no doubt continue in 2025. This includes the global economy, workforce shortages, over capacity and competition with other digital channels, and much more.

We believe that automation and AI will continue to be essential in driving production efficiencies, lowering waste and increasing environmental awareness, increasing profitability and ensuring the long-term success of the industry.

In terms of Landa, we already have AI within our new Landa S11 and S11P presses, which became commercially available for the first time at drupa 2024. The new presses offer a new PrintAI module which enhances print quality even further. It ensures a perfect fit for even the most demanding folding cartons and commercial print applications requiring micro text and other brand protection features – it opens the door to additional profit generating opportunities for many businesses.

Increased sustainability while improving profitability is another key theme that will continue throughout 2025. This is where Landa’s Nanography really wins, as it eliminates printing plates and greatly reduces setup paper waste, alongside reducing job setup time to almost nil.

Another factor to consider is substrate independence. Nanography is able to produce ultra-high-quality printing on any paper stock – from the most expensive to the cheapest uncoated paper – providing the same results on each and enabling much more sustainable stocks to be chosen.

We will also undoubtedly see continued introduction of solutions to further automate, to make printers and converters more competitive and profitable, and materials such as new boards and coating to address environmental concerns.

Our priority continues to be the delivery of presses to customers around the world. Innovation is at the heart of our business, and we are continuously refining our technology and looking for ways to improve what we do.

Brendan Perring

I think the biggest advice I would have going into 2025 is for print businesses to really look at what is highly profitable within their companies and look at what their significant strengths are. Focus on those strengths and what is profitable and utilise the network of trade printers that we have at our disposal.

Companies have to stop doing work at cost or work that is not profitable that they are doing purely just to keep customers in the door. I’d recommend people move into using the variety of trade printers we have in the UK and utilise their services so you can take a higher margin of profit from that work.

At the Independent Print Industries Association (IPIA), we often have SME printers saying they can’t buy the paper as cheaply as the trade printers can produce the print. Our advice to them is that the trade printers are their friends and that they should use them and build connections with them. Diversify and build your product portfolio without having the big overheads yourself. This way you can grow your business and focus on your strengths.

Businesses and individuals also need to make sure they get out there, network, and meet as many people as possible at events such the IPIA conferences or The Print Show in Birmingham.

Even if all that you do is call five print businesses in your local area that you would deem competitors, that you’ve never spoken to before, then you are making new advancements. Speak to these companies, have meetings with them, take them for lunch, and see where you can share each other’s strengths, and see where you can help each other, rather than compete. In our own membership we have seen this as a significant route to growth.

Piet de Pauw

AI will continue to evolve and disrupt the mainstream print industry. Integrating AI into existing workflows can help printers work a little smarter, complementing rather than replacing the skills of the print industry workers. This will help printers be more efficient and flexible, making hyper-personalised and custom printing much more accessible to more businesses.

Sustainability is still a major trend, to the extent that you can argue it’s no longer a trend at all – it’s the new norm. It isn’t some niche thing anymore and most print customers will be looking for ways to meet their sustainability goals.

This means there’s a real focus on solvent-free or biodegradable inks, new recyclable or recycled substrates, and energy-efficient processes. Of course, this puts the focus on quality control, as different inks and materials can affect the appearance of printed colours. That means pre-press and reprographics, so often treated as supporting players and unsung heroes, will become headline acts in 2025.

Utilising AR technology in combination with printed materials will continue to blur the line between the physical and digital worlds. This opens up unlimited creative possibilities – now something as simple as a flyer can be turned into a fully interactive, 3D digital experience.

Wide-format designs can turn flat billboards into blockbuster experiences – imagine a movie poster that pulls characters and fantastical creatures into the real world via your smartphone.

On-demand printing and web-to-print (W2P) shops will also grow in popularity, because people need their print, and they need it now.

Customers increasingly expect printers to accommodate short run just-in-time jobs, meaning printers need to incorporate more automation into their workflows to keep up with demand while maintaining quality. This is where solutions like Switch come in handy, as it can seamlessly integrate into virtually any tech stack – and what will separate businesses in 2025 will be how efficiently their digital workflows are integrated into the rest of their processes.

Andy Gregory

For many operating within the printing industry, the last few years have seen considerable flux and challenges at every level. At the same time, and as per the wider populous, many print companies are keen to deliver on the environmental responsibilities we all face. We envisage 2025 to be a turning point that conjoins these two factors.

The economic situation for the coming year could continue to be challenging, however the technological developments from manufacturers that address sustainability issues could also help businesses reduce operating costs through new solutions.

As such, lowering energy use, managing print waste through greater adoption of recycling, and reducing ink and consumable costs will be big driving factors for every business in the print and sign industry.

Lowering energy use, managing print waste through greater adoption of recycling, and reducing ink and consumable costs will be big driving factors for every business

New developments from Mimaki are coming online through the end of 2024 and into 2025. The expansion of the company’s ink saving technology – that can reduce costs by around 30% – is being rolled out across new hardware launches. A major feature included free of charge in Mimaki’s RasterLink RIP software, the ink saving function, reduces ink use without affecting discernible print quality.

Furthermore, the CJV200 printer/cutter launched at the Print Show 2024 is available with Mimaki’s new BS4 ink that delivers a high-quality result yet sits at a price point that makes it very attractive to the most cost-conscious businesses.

Lastly, as Mimaki’s distributor for the UK and Ireland, Hybrid is continuing to evolve its unique rebate linked recycling scheme for solvent ink cartridges, to include the new cardboard packaging that will be replacing the current SS21 plastic cartridges.

All these solutions demonstrate Hybrid and Mimaki’s commitment to helping customers deliver on their environmental goals as well as reducing costs and improving profit margins.

Julia O'Loughlin

At Parkside, we expect AI and the shift toward automation to be the biggest change as companies look to enhance efficiency and reduce waste. As sustainability pressures intensify, automated workflows will help printers meet sustainability standards more easily, streamlining production to use fewer resources.

It is likely that the continued growth in legislative demands will push printers to adopt automated systems that ensure compliance with minimal manual oversight. By reducing lead times and managing short, frequent print runs, automation can also help meet growing customer demand for flexibility.

Sustainability will also continue to dominate the industry as a key theme. This is in part due to the fact it is just so vast as an issue. Whether the focus is on recyclable and biodegradable materials, zero-waste designs, reducing carbon footprints, or eco-certifications like FSC and PEFC, it underpins so many different issues we face as a business and as an industry.

However, all these sustainability issues will need to be tackled against a backdrop of uncertain economic conditions and rising energy and raw material costs. The courses of action taken by businesses to address these issues will undoubtedly differ and it will be interesting to see how it plays out.

Some of the biggest things to look out for will be the developments in sustainable and connected packaging. For example, progress with biodegradable and recyclable materials, along with barrier coatings for paper that replicate plastic or foil functionality, will be essential as the industry moves toward a circular economy.

On the digital side, smart packaging, enabled by QR codes, Near Field Communication, and Augmented Reality offers new, exciting ways for brands to engage consumers with interactive experiences, enhancing brand engagement and loyalty.

How printers help brands to utilise these evolving digital technologies will be interesting to see

How printers help brands to utilise these evolving digital technologies will be interesting to see. If used correctly, and it can be a big ‘if’, then they can support greater personalisation and flexibility, catering to the growing consumer demand.

Kieran Dallow

We have seen that the output capacity of print machinery has steadily increased, which presents print providers with big opportunities in the coming months and years. Customers’ expectations of high volumes of great-quality output with fast turnaround times will drive demand for accessible stocks. However, with limited space, they will need to make sure they’re working with suppliers who can react fast and deliver quickly.

We also see that a lot of the printing formerly being outsourced prior to Brexit from European countries, such as Poland, is now being done in the UK. This opportunity is driving a big demand for trade print.
I believe soft signage will grow in popularity next year. It offers many advantages over rigid media because it is much lighter, easier to transport, and significantly reduces shipping costs. There’s a big difference between handling a 5m rolled-up banner or 3m x 1m board and one that is folded up and put into a small box.

This becomes particularly beneficial for the grand-format print suppliers. Thanks to manufacturers like Liyu, who produce 3.2m+ machines that are more affordable than before while maintaining high quality and speeds. This creates new opportunities for smaller print companies to expand their offering and take on larger projects.

With all this investment in new printing technology, ensuring you have a fast, simple supply of all the media you need is critical. Innotech has recently invested in its warehousing to help meet this demand and ensure we can deliver our full range of products with same or next-day delivery throughout the country.

Tom Peire

As technological advancements within customisation and personalisation continue, and as printers move further towards ‘print of one ’models, print service providers are having to keep up with this demand in order to remain competitive and profitable.

As a result, an increasing number of printers are implementing web-to-print systems to sell print online, ensuring they can efficiently handle this increase in production and maximise revenue opportunities.

Next to “traditional” e-commerce, the platform economy is increasingly impacting business and production in print. Print or creator platforms like Canva, CloudPrinter, Etsy, Gelato, Gooten, Printify, and others are pushing Print Service Providers (PSPs) to rethink the way they do business and organise their production. The main driver for that is a shift from mass production to mass customisation pushed by those platforms. This doesn’t need to be a scary prospect for print businesses – whilst the volume of print is decreasing, print is becoming more valuable with the opportunities for diversification into new revenue streams within print only growing.

In today’s print economy, the term ‘web-to-print’ is no longer representative of the evolving requirements of print buyers and brands. With orders simply coming in through multiple online sources, whether that is an open or a closed webshop, a brand portal, or a print or creator platform – it’s now a case of ‘web-to-anything you want to personalise’. In line with this shift, we expect to see a greater adoption of cloud-based tools and platforms within print production in order for systems to be more interconnected.

With orders simply coming in through multiple online sources, whether that is an open or a closed webshop, a brand portal, or a print or creator platform – it’s now a case of ‘web-to-anything you want to personalise'

A major hot topic across the print industry and further afield has been, and continues to be, AI. Within the print industry specifically, we predict AI to become increasingly used in the form of chatbots for customer service, within image and video creation, within print production in the form of pixel creation, and for smarter print layouts and ganging/nesting.

This growing adoption of AI within print production is complementary to the shift to cloud-based technologies, enabling print service providers to remain competitive and become even more profitable and efficient.