Europe's printers are facing a squeeze in their margins that is increasingly hard to ignore – and one that’s highlighted by the 2025 Economic Report from Intergraf, the European federation for the printing industry. The study clearly lays out the key forces at play: costs across the industry have risen by a greater degree than printers could or would want to increase their sales prices; and employee-related costs have also climbed.
As a result, 87% of businesses report an increase in per‑capita costs year over year (2023–2024). Meaning 38% of companies saw a corresponding significant decrease in their margins.
The upside? Today, printers long used to the need to stay up-to-speed with the latest streamlining solutions have a new set of tools available to counter contemporary pressures – workflow automation, digitalisation and AI.
Automation is becoming all the more important for the competitiveness of print shops,” says Dr David Schmedding, chief technology and sales officer at print tech company Heidelberg, “In this situation, attention is focusing on hybrid print production with an automated and increasingly AI-driven workflow.
Printers reinventing productivity – three automation and AI case studies
1. How a Dutch printer eliminated bottlenecks with automated workflow
Bredewold is a print shop in the Netherlands specialising in commercial, digital and large-format work. Previously, their manual system created bottlenecks that meant the presses were waiting while the front office struggled to ready jobs. Digitisation, in the form of automation platform Enfocus Switch, turned stressful order handling into a hands‑off workflow that moved jobs from webshop to press instantly, eliminating file chasing while giving real‑time visibility across all order types. The result was higher capacity during peak months, lower costs and happier employees (freed from performing repetitive manual tasks).
2. How a news publisher cut workload in half with AI-driven layouts and automated prepress
Since 2022, Sweden’s Bonnier News has used Naviga Flow, an AI print automation system, to help make layout and print production more efficient across the 45 newspapers it produces in Sweden and Finland. The AI makes millions of calculations to create the optimal layout for each newspaper – in this way it selects articles, images and quotes to fit the pages. In March 2024, Bonnier adopted an automated prepress workflow that takes the assembled pages to assign ads and paginate the InDesign files before outputting press-ready files. Print planners are on hand to supervise edge cases and provide final checks. The final anlysis? The new systems have cut workloads in half.
3. How a labels printer scaled output and revenue by automating workflows
Wisconsin-based labels printer Inkworks turned to HP’s Site Flow workflow platform when they found their product lines growing and increasing transaction volume creating a bottleneck. Site Flow provided end‑to‑end automation, cutting manual handling per job and moving work through intake to production with fewer touchpoints. Despite the complexity and number of SKUs, production was streamlined and seamless. The new system enabled Inkworks to grow its business by 30-40% and added $1million in sales – while adding only one member of staff to the team.
Start small and pay attention to the process – where to start with AI and automation
Print operations can be optimised from end to end with new technology and automated workflows. “AI has incredible potential to transform the world of print production and enable automation of everything from servicing your customers to scheduling and optimizing production,” says Gelato chief product officer, Marcus Boijemyr.
But according to Steve Metcalf, founder and CEO of Imagine AI Live (an established US business AI education and events platform), it’s best not to try to do everything at once, but to start small. Your goal is to identify places where AI can be introduced to streamline workflow…
• Pick one area of operations and seek the inefficiencies
• Look for overlaps between tasks and places where data has to be input multiple times.
From small beginnings, you can move onto starting to assemble processes…
• Build from what the automation and AI first implement to see what adjacent tasks or departments can be integrated.
• Make sure that the data used is complete and free from errors – good analytics rely on clean data.
• Eventually, start to focus on high-impact operations – prioritising quality control, predictive maintenance and automation to offset labour constraints.
And remember, not everyone is taking advantage of these new tech opportunities – yet. The sooner you start, the greater your competitive advantage can be.