Continuous Forms Printing Market

[JPiestrak]

Management has been kicking the idea of getting a brand new continuous forms press and getting into continuous forms/check printing. Boss thinks that there is a big market for union continuous forms printing. I admit I know very little about this, but I have a feeling he's getting in on the tail end of the market for "continuous forms" printing. Is it something that you guys would be comfortable getting into at this stage of the game?

 

[ASM]

Re: Continuous Forms Printing Market

Jeff, It would be a brave company indeed in my view who enters continuous forms today from a standing start. I'm in Australia and the CF market has been savaged in recent years with closures, bankrupcies and their markets just evapourating. Think of names like Kalamazoo, Moore Paragon, Lamson....

There is no question there is still a demand for CFs in areas such as courier companies, law enforcement (speeding tickets!!) postal, government departments etc. But this capacity is more than catered for by existing players and competition is fierce. If it's security forms printing you are looking at - cheques - I see that as a dying market. So unless your management has found a magic bullet that's going to win them contracts to keep very expensive forms presses, tinters, perforators and collators going, I'd stay away.

If they are determioned to spend some money, think about an HP Indigo (no I do not work for HP!) narrow web continuous digital press - you can do variable data security printing on them and maybe enter the short-run labels market too.

The CF market is also heavily controlled by brokers who place printing contracts with the lowest bidder - why be a slave to that?