British Printers Retool To Survive Digital Shift
英國出版業數位時代求生
By Georgi Kantchev

PETERBOROUGH, England – The efforts of traditional print media executives to grope their way into the digital future have been well chronicled. But what about the executives even more tightly bound to the presses – the people who run big printing companies?
傳統印刷媒體的負責人如何努力摸索，以便在數位時代仍能繼續生存前進，已經留下完整的紀錄。然而，那些與印刷機關係更為密切的主管，也就是負責經營大型印刷公司那些的人，又當如何呢？

Roy Kingston, the 55-year-old chief operating officer of Wyndeham, a privately held company that is one of Britain’s biggest printers and whose portfolio includes the British circulation of The Economist and Men’s Health magazine, has survived to tell the tale, even if not everyone in his industry has been so fortunate.
未上市的溫德漢公司是英國最大的印刷公司之一，資產組合包括英國版「經濟學人」與「男士健康」雜誌的發行業務，55歲的營運長金士頓通過了這一波浪潮的洗禮與考驗，可以敘述這個過程，然而業界並不是每一個人都像他那麼幸運。

“This boardroom is about the only thing that hasn’t changed around here,” he said, sitting at an antique conference table in the heart of Wyndeham’s printing plant here.
他坐在英格蘭彼得伯勒市溫德漢印刷廠心臟所在，也就是董事會會議室裡一張古董級會議桌旁，說道：「這個會議室可能是這裡唯一不曾改變的東西。」

In many ways, printing itself has gone digital. Industrial-strength laser printers enable big printing plants to make quick and cost-effective small-batch runs. Even Wyndeham’s big offset machines – which print from lithographic plates created from digital files – are so highly automated that a crew of just a dozen or so can manage them.
就許多方面而言，印刷已經數位化了。業界使用的工業級雷射印刷機使大型印刷廠得以快速印製小量成品，而且極合乎成本效益。即使溫德漢的大型平版印刷機（以來自數位檔案的平版印刷版印刷）也已經高度自動化，區區十數人就可以操作。

“This is almost a peopleless business now,” Mr. Kingston said. “At one point we had 350 people in this plant. Now we have 114. But the amount of work has more than doubled.”
金士頓說：「如今，這幾乎已經成為一門不必用到人的生意。這座印刷廠曾經用到350人，現在已減至114人。然而工作卻增加了一倍以上。」

The industry’s survivors are holding on, in part by moving beyond print media to products like labeling. Mr. Kingston cited a Swedish study of supermarket shoppers that found price was often secondary to labeling in people’s purchasing decisions. “Most people buy products they don’t even know about, based on the packaging, based on the thing that is hanging in front of them,” he said.
業界的倖存者絕不輕言放棄，方法之一是，超越印刷媒體，跨入標貼之類的產品領域。金士頓引用瑞典一項針對超市購物民眾所做的調查報告指出，在一般人決定選購何種商品時，價格的重要性往往不及標籤。他說：「多數人會購買他們甚至從未聽過的產品，根據的是產品的包裝，根據的是掛在他們眼前的東西。」

Wyndeham has developed a product it calls “emagine,” a form of production management software that media companies can use for print and online delivery. It has also set up a division to focus on online media applications.
溫德漢已經發展出一種名為emagine的產品。這是一種產品管理軟體，媒體公司可用於印刷與線上送貨。它還設立了一個負責線上媒體應用的部門。

Digital printing also makes it feasible for retailers to print catalogs aimed at individual customers’ buying preferences.
數位印刷也使零售商得以印製鎖定個別顧客購物偏好的目錄及廣告。

Back in the 1990s, Mr. Kingston said, the plant had three presses that could turn out about 20,000 copies of a 32-page publication in an hour. Now there are two machines that are capable of producing triple that amount.
金士頓說，回顧1990年代，溫德漢印刷廠有三部印刷機，可在一小時內印出兩萬份有32頁的刊物。現在的兩部印刷機可以印出三倍於此的量。

In 2001, the British printing industry had around 200,000 employees. There are now fewer than 125,000, according to the British Printing Industries Federation.
英國印刷工業聯合會說，2001年，英國印刷業約有20萬名員工，目前剩下不到12.5萬人。

Britain’s printing industry is ranked fifth by revenue behind the United States, China, Japan and Germany. Its revenue is projected to shrink to about 10 billion pounds, or approximately $17 billion, by 2017, down from more than £15 billion in the 1990s, according to Key Note, a research company.
英國印刷業的營收排名全球第五，次於美國、中國大陸、日本與德國。「主旨」研究公司說，估計至2017年，英國印刷業的收入將減至100億英鎊（約170億美元），而1990年代時則高逾150億英鎊。

The global printing industry, with estimated revenue of $880 billion last year, will grow by about 2 percent a year until 2018, driven mainly by emerging market countries, in the view of Smithers Pira, a research company. China will probably overtake the United States as the world’s biggest print market this year, Smithers Pira said, while India will move ahead of Britain by 2018.
史密瑟斯‧皮拉研究公司說，全球印刷業去年總收入約8800億美元，估計至2018年，每年可成長2%，新興市場國家是主要的驅動力。它又說，中國大陸今年可能取代美國，成為舉世最大的印刷品市場，印度則2018年就會超越英國。

European printers have had an especially difficult period, given the region’s sluggish economy. Britain, with its heavily unionized work force, is also vulnerable to competition.
歐洲印刷廠因為歐洲經濟成長遲緩而致處境特別艱困。英國勞工的工會化程度很高，印刷業者同樣難以應付競爭。

“The Italians offer very high quality but also low price because of their low labor cost,” said Robert G. Picard, a professor of media economics at the University of Oxford.
牛津大學教授皮卡德說：「義大利人提供很高的品質，卻因為勞力成本低而致價格偏低。」

An overall gauge of the industry could be seen at Ipex, an international printing industry convention held at the ExCeL exhibition center in London in March. This year’s event required only 30 percent of the exhibition space it needed in 2010, according to PrintWeek.
這一行的整體評估可由三月在倫敦會展中心舉行的國際印刷展Ipex中看出端倪。英國知名印刷媒體PrintWeek說，今年展覽所需的展出空間只有2010年的30%。

Mr. Kingston, who has attended Ipex since the 1980s, was struck by the change. “An exhibition that even four years ago would have taken you a day to get around, you can now do in just an hour,” he said. “Your coffee wouldn’t even get cold.”
金士頓1980年代就已出席Ipex展，對改變之大感到驚訝。他說：「四年前，你可能要花一整天才能逛完整個展場，現在只要一個小時。甚至連你的咖啡都還不會涼掉。」

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/14/business/printers-play-a-digital-game-of-digital-survival.html

2014-04-29聯合報/G9版/UNITEDDAILYNEWS 陳世欽譯 原文參見紐時週報七版左