Market research and consulting firm, InfoTrends, recently released a study called Transforming Textile Printing that examines the digital textile printing market. The study explores the textile market supply chain, sizes and forecasts the digital textile printing market and focuses on the demand drivers for digital textile production.

The potential for digital printing to influence the printed textile market has long been promised, yet only now—with the new dynamics on the demand generation side and the introduction of super high-speed digital printing systems with open ink configurations—are fabrics printing companies able to meet new customer demands.

The global textile industry is worth approximately $1 trillion. Of that, InfoTrends estimates that the value of digitally printed textile garments, décor items and industrial products is valued at $10.3 billion in 2012, or less than 1.5 percent of the total market. Although the digital textile printing market is small in comparison to the entire textile industry, it is rapidly growing.

Estimates indicate that revenues from digital textile equipment and ink sales will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 30.7 percent. According to InfoTrends, some key trends that are driving this growth include risk mitigation from the retailer and brand community, and on the technology side the emergence of high quality, high cost inkjet print heads, the availability of moderately priced solutions that enable new market entrants and open system inkjet print heads that allow for multiple ink suppliers resulting in lower ink prices.

The study is based on in-depth interviews with buyers and specifiers of digital textiles, digital textile print service providers, and suppliers to the digital textile printing industry (hardware suppliers, inkjet print head manufacturers and systems integrators). The reach was global, with interviews primarily in China, India, the United States, and Italy, with a mix from some other European countries.

Source: InfoTrends