Fast-forward five years and the situation has changed radically. Gone are the days when companies were happy to use sub-standard equipment – the demands of Western buyers saw to that. Today your average Chinese commercial print operation has a factory floor full of glistening offset and digital equipment churning out high quality work for domestic, local and international markets.

It's not the only nation in Asia whose printing industry has undergone a radical transformation. Rival superpower India may lag behind China economically and technology wise, but the rate with which Indian printers are embracing the latest printing equipment is phenomenal. (Reports on the ground suggest that sales of digital textile printing machines are flying, as the nation's textile printers make the switch from screen).

And these are just the headline grabbing nations. There are growing wide-format markets in Japan, Malaysia and Singapore – although the latter saw printing output decrease in 2009 as a result of the global recession, thanks to government support, Singaporean printers continued to invest and are now in pole position to capitalise on a resurgent economy.

The market projections underline the role that the Asian printing industry looks set to play in the future, particularly in the digital sphere. By 2013, Pira forecasts 58% of all wide-format signage output in Asia will be produced digitally and by the same year 38% of total global digital printed signage will be produced in Asia.

And this isn't even taking into account the phenomenal potential of countries like Vietnam, where digital printing is still in its infancy. According to the Vietnam Printing Association, offset printing accounts for 65% of all print in the country whereas digital accounts for less than 5%.

There are tremendous opportunities for both manufacturers looking to sell equipment into the Asian market and from the perspective of the printer who could be selling the benefits of this technology to customers and capitalising on the growing demand for printed collateral, such as vehicle wraps, which are commonplace in Europe but are only just emerging as a significant opportunity in Asia (the first dedicated vehicle wrap printer in China opened for business in Shanghai last year)

To take advantage of these opportunities, join FESPA at it's forthcoming show FESPA Asia 2011