We interviewed Jos Steutelings who is the Managing Director of the VIGC about their view of the print industry, the changes that are shaping the Belgian and European market and what the association is doing to create value for the community and help its members lead their future.

1. Tell me a little about your role at VIGC?

The Flemish Innovation Center for Graphic Communication (VIGC) is both an innovation centre and a network and community for the Benelux print market. We look at graphic innovation in the field of technology, workflow, process and increasingly also at developing business models. 

As an independent knowledge centre, we inform and support all companies and organizations with printing and printing activities, their customers and creative suppliers, with the introduction of innovations and best practices. The mission of VIGC is, therefore, to improve the quality of the value chain, making it more efficient and sustainable and strengthening competitiveness. 

It is our job to listen carefully to our members and strategic partners. We put them into the centre of our organization and adjust our operation in a flexible manner according to printers needs. A key value is our independent position in the graphic landscape, which enables us to create insight into the latest trends, opportunities and challenges and we can help our members in a practical way.

My role as a Managing Director is to set out the strategy. This means building good relationships with all the industry partners, detecting the needs of the industry towards technological innovation and launching initiatives to support the needs of our industry. Of course, financing the operations is also quite a job because we’re a non-profit and independent organization.

At VIGC we work with a small but very dedicated team with years of experience in the print industry.

2. What are the key issues for Print in Belgium in 2020?

We are a very small print market if you compare it to our neighbour countries. What you typically see is a decline of that market that has a turnover of around €2,4 billion (2018). Of course, it all depends on how you look at the market. Commercial printing is under pressure but labels & packaging is still growing. Large format and signage was previously a relatively good market however now companies now complain of saturation because a lot of commercial printers have entered this market in the last 2 years.

Additionally, you see increased consolidation and bankruptcies most of the time at medium size companies. 

There are also a lot of new entrants in the Belgian market from outside the country. Particularly if you look at the online print sector you will notice that Dutch and German online printers are gaining more importance in the Belgian print market.

On the other hand, we have some great and innovative printing companies. They all try to compete with the digitisation of our society. They are very successful if they work together and if they focus on digitisation and rationalisation. 

So the key issues are collaboration, automation and looking for niches and added value in the communication mix.

3. Do you think we will see some exciting new things in the next 12 months particularly with DRUPA?

I think DRUPA still is an important trade show. But these days, I don’t think business owners are led by DRUPA in the same way as in the past. This event used to be a milestone for investments, but the world has changed!

Of course, I think there will be some nice new technology. In particular towards inkjet and commercial print, I expect some interesting developments. For nanotechnology, it will be ‘do or die’. And automation (Industry 4.0) has to prove its value for the print sector. 

Talking about added value and smaller runs digital finishing and embellishment is definitely an enabler for creating more value for our print industry, I expect to see some interesting innovations in this area at Drupa.

4. What has VIGC got planned for the next 12 months?

With a team of only 5 people, we undertake quite a few sector-strengthening activities. To structure our operations, we have chosen to work around 3 perspectives.

• Our one-to-many activities are contained in our events

• Then you have the one-to-a-few promotions that we translate into our training courses

• And finally, you have our consultancy or our one-to-one approach for companies that need an individual coaching process

April 23 we will organize the 3rd Benelux Online Print Event in Antwerp. Great content with international speakers about online print and also a lot of networking possibilities. This event is open for European printers as it is in English. Our yearly Congress (Dutch-speaking) will take place on October 15th in Mechelen (Brussels area) and will cover Industry 4.0 topics. We organize 5 events a year and one abroad study trip (in 2019 this was Stockholm) that is also open for European printers (English).

Our training programmes are broad and cover topics as there are Inkjet technology, Industry 4.0, pdf, color, market trends, packaging essentials, cost calculation, functional printing, … These trainings can be followed in Dutch and English (on demand).

VIGC will also work on a paper about Industry4.0/Smart Workflow Automation in Print commissioned by R.I.T (US).

The goal is to overview Industry 4.0 solutions from graphic industry vendors, survey the Western European print service providers towards Industry 4.0 and write 3 case studies. We will work on this spring 2020. Our deadline is the end of June 2020.

5. The trends towards Sustainability, how will this affect Print?

I think our industry showed and still shows a lot of interest in sustainability. On the other hand, print is unfairly criticised in a lot of mainstream communication. As an industry, we need to stand up to this kind of unilateral communication.

Especially paper is not a damaging factor to the environment as some suggest. It is no worse than smart technology! So you have to look at the environment as an end-to-end issue and measuring and reducing carbon output I think is a more practical and helpful way to manage sustainability as opposed to demonising one element such as paper.

That being said I think in packaging sustainability will have a huge impact on our print companies the coming years. Plastics will be more and more replaced by other more environmentally friendly materials. But this will be a gradual change because it’s a complex process based on shelf life, protection of the goods, transportability, food safety, regulation, …

6. What key technology development would you like to see in Print?

Communication is all about data. If we have data, we can communicate through print and digital channels. The main problem is that most of our customers don’t have a clue about how they need to collect and manage that data from their customers. 

If you draw the line this means that we as printers have the technological potential to print smaller and more segmented communication but most of the time don’t receive well-qualified data. 

So if someone from within our industry would come up with a data model and user-friendly approach that could help us help our customers I think we all could benefit from this. I don’t think (digital) print technology is the bottleneck - I think that data is.

To contact Jos, email him here

For more information on VIGC, visit the website here.