COMMERCIAL PRINTING - A Soft Landing

If the soft landing is achieved as expected, the NAPL economist expects commercial printing sales growth to slow to between 3.5 percent and 4.5 percent in 2001. If the landing is rougher than anticipated, print sales will be in the lower end of that range, he reveals.

The forecast coming out of the Printing Industries of America (PIA) is a little more optimistic, at least in the case of its recent "Vision 21" study. Conducted in association with Standard & Poor's/DRI, the study predicts industry revenues to grow by 4.7 percent per year through 2003. The difference in the numbers possibly could be explained by the fact that the study's figure is a projected compound annual growth rate over a multi-year period, which involves some averaging. Papparozzi's projection is just for 2001.