According to a report from global market research firm Technavio, the worldwide market for large-format printers is expected to grow at a modest but steady 2 percent compound annual growth rate from 2017 through 2021.
The research firm says that one of the primary growth drivers is the rise in adoption of UV-curable ink, which is being increasingly used across a variety of industries. The report sites the low heat generation; the fast UV curing process; the ability for UV-curing inks to print onto almost any substrate, including wood, foam board, glass, vinyl and cardboard; and the ink’s durability even in outdoor conditions. The result, the report says, is higher productivity and reduced ink consumption, both of which lower a print shop’s operational costs.
The report also sites 3D printing as a rising trend traction in the large-format printer market.
“Benefits like high-quality output, energy efficiency, and less (waste) have made 3D printers a preferred (type) among end-users in comparison to traditional 2D printing. 3D (printers) can provide organizations with relevant and inexpensive giveaways like prizes or scaled-down replicas of products too large to bring to (a) show. This has compelled firms to adopt 3D printing … as an imperative part of their operations. Moreover, advancements in technologies like selective laser sintering (SMB) and fused deposition modeling (FDM) will augment the growth of the 3D printing market in the coming years,” the report says.
The report refers to Canon, Epson, HP, Mimaki and Roland as “leading vendors in the large-format market” while it says “other prominent vendors include” Agfa Graphics, Konica Minolta, Kyocera, Lexmark, Mutoh, Ricoh andXerox.
The report states: “The global (large-format printers) market is highly consolidated due to the presence of few established vendors holding significant parts of their respective market. To gain a competitive advantage, these vendors are growing inorganically with an increasing number of mergers and acquisitions. In an attempt to address the requirements involving different levels of complexity from the end-user segment, a number of companies are investing heavily in R&D to come up with customized and application-specific printers. Also, to gain market shares in emerging (geographic) markets players are highly focused on the development of LFPs with a balance in quality and cost.”
The report also notes that large-format printers primarily use one of four types of ink: aqueous, solvent, UV-cured and Latex.
“During 2016, the aqueous ink-based LFPs dominated the LFPs market and accounted for a major part of the overall market share. Factors like high affordability and increased presence in the market are the key contributors to the dominance of this segment in the LFPs market. Aqueous ink LFPs offer high standards of print quality with better efficiency compared with solvent inks. Further, the low environmental hazards caused by aqueous ink is compelling users to adopt aqueous ink; this growth in the penetration rate of aqueous ink will result in the growth of the LFPs market in the coming years,” the authors of the report say.
In terms of geography, the Asian-Pacific region and China accounted for the largest amount of market share in 2016. The report notes the “rapid technological advances” in South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and China, “resulting in better printers with enhanced quality.” It also notes that several established vendors operate in that region and that the advertising and graphics industries in those countries are growing faster than some other parts of the world.