As we reflect on the past year, which was a healthy one overall for mergers and acquisitions in the printing industry, it’s a good moment to assess what drove the activity in 2025 and what’s likely to carry the momentum forward into 2026.

The industry’s two principal segments — packaging and commercial printing — have different financial parameters. But the macroeconomic trends underpinning them are the same, and those forces remain encouraging for buyers and sellers alike.

Especially reassuring is the fact that the pace of M&As is coming back up to what it was in the early years of the present decade. 2021 and 2022 were record breakers in terms of transactions completed — as M&A advisers, we were never busier. Although not quite as hyperactive, 2023 was a blockbuster in its own right.

We can report that the pace has picked up again in 2025, so much so that in the remainder of the year and into 2026 we expect activity to look more like it did in 2023 than it did in 2024.

The State of M&A in the Commercial Printing Segment