So what positive things can I say about 2010? Hmm, well it was a damn-sight better than 2009 for a start.

Ipex seemed to give the industry a lift and coincided with a noticeable – albeit small – increase in optimism, which appeared, in some quarters at least, to gain momentum as the year went on.

Of course, there’s no denying that the economic hangover of 2008/2009 still left the industry with a seriously fuggy head – certainly in terms of the availability of credit at least. And it looks like that’s set to continue for a while yet.

But what will the year be remembered for, aside from an abysmal World Cup bid performance?

There’s little doubt that the tsunami of paper price increases, which resulted in some grades increasing by more than 30% in a year, will be one of the contenders for the most infamous trends of 2010 – and the bad news is it looks like its set to continue into well 2011 as manufacturers appear to be hell-bent on, in their words, balancing supply and demand – whereas in most printers’ minds it would probably be more perceived as restricting supply to increase prices.

Of course, what’s good for the goose should be good for the gander, so it will be interesting to see if the culling of capacity last year among some of the larger print groups will have a similar impact on print prices, and if it does will it trickle down to smaller companies – we can live in hope.

However, I’ll remember 2010 for the near extinction of the accursed phoenix as, ironically, the straitened economic conditions that made it difficult for any company (let alone one that dumped its debt and created a ‘new’ firm with no trading history) to get trade credit seems to have, if not completely wiped them out, certainly stymied their occurrence.

But whatever you remember 2010 for, here’s hoping that when we get to the same point next year we’ll have a broader choice of positive events and trends to look back on rather than ‘well it was damn-sight better than 2010’.

Darryl Danielli is editor of PrintWeek