Commercial Printers Adding Packaging

"We pursued custom labels because the packaging segment of the printing industry is growing," he notes. "There are opportunities for distributors to participate in that growth segment. For us, planning was the key."

Similarly, two years ago, Henry Serrano attended an NAPL conference with his partner. Serrano, the president of Miami-based folding carton firm Vista Color, had reached a crossroads. A commercial printer since the mid-1990s, Vista Color had acquired an in-house printing business of a pharmaceutical company that produced small literature inserts, adhesive roll labels, and folding cartons. By the year 2000, Serrano had divested the labels to concentrate on folding cartons. The commercial work would continue to dwindle and, in 2011, folding cartons completely took over.