NS plakat company from Novi Sad (Serbia) together with its subsidiary Print Grupa from Zagreb (Croatia) sits on the large format printing throne in the Adria / Balkan region (AB), with an accumulated revenue of almost 10 million euro in 2015.
The graphic industry of large format printing throughout the Adria / Balkan (AB) region is left on its own. The lack of clear national development guidelines can be noticed in every country of the region, from Slovenia to Serbia.
Large format printing houses are the specificity of graphic arts industry and at the moment in any country of the region there is no serious association that would gather these companies and help them develop or seriously represent them towards state institutions. There are some graphic arts industry associations which in their membership partly also gather “large format printers”, but on the market they are doing business in a quite unorganized way. Financial and by the number of employees they are mostly smaller printers, but with constant growth of business, income and with profit above average.
The lack of official analysis for a group of companies whose revenue is based on a large format print by state institutions is a big disadvantage.
Analyzing method of gathered data
Hereafter we will try to make a brief analysis of “large format printers”. Analysis was made based on the information obtained from the raw materials wholesales, partners of the Print Magazine in AB region. In advance we do apologize if we didn’t include all of the printers in analysis. Turnover data and number of employees were analyzed based on business operations in 2014 and 2015. We have used official data of the international group Bisnode AB, collected from legally available sources. Due to poorly available data regarding BiH printers, the analysis is based on the data of printers from Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia.
Highest by revenue
Currently, the most serious “large format” producer in the region is company NS plakat from Novi Sad (Serbia), who with its subsidiary Print Grupa from Croatia has a revenue of nearly 10 million euro. It is followed by Belgrade DPC who has revenue of 7.1 million euro. Belina from Krapinske Toplice (Croatia) had a revenue of 6.66 million euro in 2015, and Eclipse from Slovenian Cerknica 5.04 million euro. There are eight more printers who have “printed” from one to five million euro of revenue. The rest are the printers with smaller revenues and we did not seriously analyze them.
Biggest by profit
DPC company from Belgrade has get far ahead of the competition regarding posted profit. In 2015 they have performed profit of 1.5 million euro. Eclipse is on the second place with 579 thousands euro, while Print Grupa, Belina, Signum Max and NS Plakat had a profit from 420 to 480 thousands of euro. FED company from Zagreb has reached 370 thousand euro, while the other printers have had a significantly lower profit. Though the profit is not the true criteria of printing power, we have noticed a big disproportion between large format printers, where profit often exceeds 10 % of total revenue and classic offset printers where profit is usually a couple of percent of total revenue.
Biggest by employed and income they generate
Proprietary associated Print Grupa from Zagreb (79 employees) and NS Plakat (71 employees) from Novi Sad have altogether 150 employees. Far below them is DPC with 98 employees, Grafix with 79 employees, Signum max with 60 and Belina with 51 employees. Other printers have smaller number of employees.
If we look at income per employee, three printers are highlighted. DPC is again in the first place with 15.236 euro of income per employee, followed by Slovenian Eclipse with 14.127 euro and FED from Zagreb with 12.057 euro of income per employee. Others are under 10.000 euro per employee. All printers that have a higher income per employee have also significant share of POS production in their portfolio. We assume that this part of graphic production can boast with a bigger profits.
The biggest growth
We have analyzed several business segments of large format printers. According the total revenue the biggest growth has V-tisk (43%), followed by Print Grupa (26%) and Vult (20%).
According to the number of employees V-tisk has increased the number of employees by 50 %, Vult by 36 % and Signum max by 22 %.
Print Grupa has the biggest profit growth, up to 20 times compared to the previous year. Linea and Eclipse have doubled their profits, and Belina, Pixel, V-tisk and Print Studio can also boast with a growth. Others have reduced their profits compared to 2014.
This was only a brief analysis just to emphasize also this segment of graphic arts industry. In the next issues we will analyze some other segments of the industry.
