Worldwide Market Overview For 2026 First Half Year By EcooGraphix

Here is what we have seen and its impact on the printing, packaging, and label industry:

1) Raw material costs – including aluminium (with a 15% annual price growth) and oil‑related chemicals – continue to build cost‑increase pressure for the printing industry. At the same time, semiconductor sector costs are rising rapidly, causing electronic product prices to increase quickly.

2) Growth areas by market segment – we see clear and strong growth in the flexo printing segment worldwide. This is the case for African countries, Southeast Asia, North America, and South American countries. Purchases of flexo CTP equipment from these regions are accelerating. We also observe a clear trend in flexo printing where digital plate‑making is replacing conventional plate‑making, and the same applies to flexo plates. This is in line with flexo printing growth in label printing, flexo packaging printing, corrugated printing, and plate‑making services.

3) Label printing segment – continues to show steady demand growth and decent margins. Digitalisation and value differentiation through digital embellishment are the main trends in this segment. HP Indigo, Durst, Screen, and Xeikon continue to dominate the high‑end market for digital label printing. Our EcooSpark customer base primarily uses these brands of digital presses and continues to add more such units to their fleets.

4) Paper packaging segment – we see stable market demand in this segment, with increasing competition and saturation. With paper cost and supply instability over the past period, the paper packaging segment is consolidating, and barriers to entry are getting higher and higher.

5) Commercial and publication segment – is declining in most territories, but there is strong and significant potential in African countries, driven by the needs of education and publications.

Territory perspective – we see relatively stronger demand in the USA compared to Europe, stable growth in Asia and Africa, and sluggish growth in Europe, with the eastern part seeing more demand from China. South America and the Caribbean have performed actively in the first half of 2026.