Markets and the competition
The competition
It’s difficult to present a comprehensive picture of the competition the Group meets in the different operations.
It varies between different customer categories, geographical markets and types of production. It also varies with shifts in the value chain, upstream and downstream, that arise in connection with our expansion. The graphic industry looks pretty much the same in most countries. There are thousands of small, family printers that only offer conventional printing. There are just a few groups the size of Elanders in each country. Several of them are not commercial printers. They are publishers or newspapers with in-house printing that sell their overcapacity on the market.
In Sweden Strålfors (The Swedish Post Office) is pretty much the only company the same size as Elanders. Sometimes we compete against them in bidding for big projects that contain, for example, digital printing, so called smart cards and document flows. Elanders has an advantage with a unique graphic expertise and access to efficient offset production. We are the absolute leaders in after sales information to major industrials like the automotive industry.
In automotives abroad our competition is usually customers’ internal units for publishing and local, smaller printers. Elanders has a head start through size, capacity, technology and long experience. In educational material (publishing) we run into a number of commercial printers but Elanders is the market leader in the Nordic region. We are leaders in Sweden in the public sector thanks to assignments from the Swedish Parliament and the government but we have competition from Edita and Intellecta. Once again capacity, technology and long experience are our greatest competitive edge. We are practically the only company in Sweden that can cross country borders to provide large companies with full-service solutions that contain both printed matter and packaging as well as other services. In the Nordic region we find Hansaprint and Edita/ Citat in Finland. Hansaprint offers a highly modern production of magazines for publishers and manuals for industry but it’s also getting into W2P and one-to one-communication. Elanders has come the farthest in internationalization and can offer publishing in lowcost countries. In Great Britain we meet companies like Pindar in industry and publishing and Wyndeham Westway in automotive. In Germany we run into companies like Infowerk, Victor Bück and Bosch Druck in automotive and the industry. In the Nordic region we also face different W2P players specialized in consumers and smaller companies.
In our international expansion together with multinational industrials, particularly in just-in-time production of manuals and other after sales information, we compete with RR Donnelley and Xerox. However, our main competitors are an endless number of small printers that on their own cannot handle the needs of global customers. In our expansion upstream we meet, among others, technical informers like Semcon, profile and advertising agencies, communication firms like Citat, translation companies, photo agencies, Web firms and suppliers of business and publishing systems. Downstream we mainly run into companies in logistics and supply chain management. All the major management consultants and several IT companies work, for example, with process management. Elanders has the advantage of the graphic expertise and with our broad customer base we cover the entire value chain. In the packaging industry we meet Stora Enso, Frontpac, SCA and Inpac.
Market Shares
If it was historically difficult to assess market shares in the graphic industry it certainly isn’t any easier now that developments have moved towards differentiated products with various related services. Estimating international market shares is quite simply impossible. The structure of our competitors is far too fragmented.
The table on page 39 in the Annual Report for 2009 (see attached pdf in the menu to the right) shows some of our major competitors in an attempt to gauge their strengths and shares in mutual customer categories and geographic markets.
Last updated:
4/23/2010
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