The research, which was conducted by ACA Research and commissioned by Canon, surveyed more than 210 commercial printers across Australia.
It revealed that 28% of respondents anticipated an increase in capital expenditure and 31% planned to increase their workforce over the next 12 months.
Growth opportunities also present themselves for workflow system providers as the survey revealed that 65% of the Australian market is currently not using them.
Variable-data printing was also identified by 70% of Australian respondents as an area that will become increasingly important over the next two years.
The Australian study mirrors the findings of Canon's recent Insight Report on the state of the global printing industry.
ProPrint columnist professor Frank Romano and the Rochester Institute of Technology in the US carried out the report, which surveyed 840 printers from around the world.
Global respondents identified short-run advertising collateral (84.9%), versioned promotions (74.7%) and short-run publications (65.3%) as the areas with the most growth potential.
Mark Harvey, Canon Australia's general manager for production printing systems, believes digital printing is central to printers' future success based on the results of the global insight report.
"Having digital print capacity is crucial to print service providers' prosperity, with more than half of those with digital printing reporting an increase in profits or revenues compared to only 31.7% of non-digital businesses."
Harvey concluded that exiting the global financial crisis would be challenging and printers would have to "focus on growth sectors and develop growth strategies to satisfy them".
"Both investing in a blend of printed equipment, such as offset litho and digital, and optimising workflow are key areas for action for commercial printers to succeed," he added.
The average commercial printer in Australia undertakes 290 print jobs per month, with 43% of those jobs being digital, the report claims. Of those surveyed, the median run length was 250 pages for digital projects and 3,000 for offset.
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