Commercial Printing Data Provider · Head-to-head
Statistics Canada — Manufacturing Data by NAICS 3231 vs UK ONS — Manufacturing & Industry Statistics for Printing
Which commercial printing data provider data fits your job: Statistics Canada — Manufacturing Data by NAICS 3231, or UK ONS — Manufacturing & Industry Statistics for Printing. API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
Statistics Canada — Manufacturing Data by NAICS 3231
UK ONS — Manufacturing & Industry Statistics for Printing
Where the fields line up
1 shared field — join on these.
| Field | Statistics Canada — Manufacturing Data by NAICS 3231 | UK ONS — Manufacturing & Industry Statistics for Printing |
|---|---|---|
VALUE | Observed figure in the stated unit and scalar; empty where the cell is suppressed or unavailable rather than zero. | documented |
Coverage, side by side
| Statistics Canada — Manufacturing Data by NAICS 3231 | UK ONS — Manufacturing & Industry Statistics for Printing | |
|---|---|---|
| Geographic | National plus 10 provinces and 3 territories (monthly); provinces and regions (annual) | UK aggregate for output, value added and product sales; business counts down to local authority district |
| Temporal | Monthly January 1992 - June 2026; annual principal statistics 2012-2024 | ~620 monthly periods back to the 1970s through June 2026; annual surveys to 2024-2025 editions |
What each contains
They tie on 1 attribute. Pick by fit, not by loyalty.
| Statistics Canada — Manufacturing Data by NAICS 3231 | UK ONS — Manufacturing & Industry Statistics for Printing | |
|---|---|---|
| Publisher | Statistics Canada | Office for National Statistics |
| National lens | Canadian printing sector under NAICS 3231 | UK printing sector under SIC 2007 Division 18 |
| Subject lens | Dollar flows: monthly shipments by province plus an annual 22-measure financial ledger | Output motion and structure: volume indices, turnover, gross value added, product sales, business counts |
| Products behind the record | Two manufacturing survey tables (monthly sales; annual principal statistics) | Four statistical products: Index of Production, Annual Business Survey, PRODCOM, business-register counts |
| Field dictionary | 14 documented fields, verified during research | 6 documented fields per time-series file, verified during research |
| Geographic coverage | National plus 10 provinces and 3 territories (monthly); provinces and regions (annual) | UK aggregate for output, value added and product sales; business counts down to local authority district |
| Temporal coverage | Monthly January 1992 - June 2026; annual principal statistics 2012-2024 | ~620 monthly periods back to the 1970s through June 2026; annual surveys to 2024-2025 editions |
| Detail level | NAICS 323 to 3231 to 32311 to six-digit codes, by geography and seasonality | Division 18 and class 18.1; PRODCOM product level; enterprises by region, size band, legal status |
| Output measure | Thousands of dollars throughout | Index points for output; millions of pounds for turnover and value added; counts for enterprises |
| Best for | Provincial market sizing and dollar-denominated financial forensics | Long-run output cycles, product sales and the UK business population |
What each does better
Statistics Canada — Manufacturing Data by NAICS 3231
Dollar truth, proven with a row. Ontario's seasonally adjusted NAICS 3231 sales of goods manufactured printed 378,523 thousand dollars in May 2026 and 382,072 in June - one line of a monthly table spanning ten provinces and three territories back to January 1992. No index arithmetic, no rebasing ambiguity: printers' revenue, in dollars.
Six-digit anatomy of the trade. The NAICS dimension descends from 323 through 3231 and 32311 into commercial screen printing (323113), quick printing (323114), digital printing (323115), manifold business forms printing (323116), other printing (323119), support activities for printing (32312) and even printing ink manufacturing (32591) - see NAICS 323.
Observation-level honesty. STATUS flags preliminary versus final values and TERMINATED marks discontinued series - data-quality provenance you can filter on rather than footnote.
UK ONS — Manufacturing & Industry Statistics for Printing
Time depth the Canadian series cannot match. The Division 18 volume index runs roughly 620 monthly periods back to the 1970s; the seasonally adjusted series (CDID K22W) read 90.0 in January 2026, peaked at 91.9 in March, and closed June at 87.1. Half a century of monthly history makes cycle, seasonality and structural-decline questions answerable inside one series - see index of production.
Four products behind one record. Beyond the output index sits Division 18 turnover in millions of pounds split export, home and total (CDIDs JQ6P, JQ6Q, JQ6R); the Annual Business Survey carrying annual turnover, approximate gross value added and purchases by four-digit SIC (2024 results); PRODCOM product-level manufacturers' sales within Division 18; and business-register counts of enterprises and local units by class 18.1 cross-tabulated by region, size band and legal status.
The business population, not just the money. Enterprise counts by size band and location answer who-printers-are questions - how many firms, how small, where clustered down to local authority district - that a shipments table never touches; see SIC codes.
Where they're equivalent
More than the field counts suggest. Both dictionaries were verified during research, both records score 9/10, and both descend from mandatory national statistical programs, so definitions inherit official methodology rather than a vendor's guess. Both carry monthly-grain output series with annual companions holding the structural detail. Both key every series to a stable identifier - numeric vectors on one side, CDIDs on the other - and both expose seasonally adjusted and unadjusted views of the headline series.
They also share their limits, symmetrically. Neither carries firm-level microdata: the Canadian tables hold industry-by-geography aggregates, the UK products hold industry-, product- and enterprise-count aggregates, so company-level analysis needs a different instrument. And neither rewrites history silently - Canada flags preliminary values while the UK announces each revision in the owning release - nor does either cross its own border: no Canadian province appears in the UK files, no UK nation in the Canadian ones.
The verdict
Verdict: sample both, pick by fit - they are the same trade observed with different instruments an ocean apart.
Accept its frame: no output index, no product-level sales, and nothing before January 1992.
Take UK ONS — Manufacturing & Industry Statistics for Printing if your question is about motion and population. Output-cycle turning points across five decades, export versus home turnover, product-line sales, how many printing firms exist at each size band and where they cluster. Accept its frame: national aggregation on the money series, and pounds-and-index units rather than a single dollar measure.
Sample both, pick by fit. See Statistics Canada — Manufacturing Data by NAICS 3231 · See UK ONS — Manufacturing & Industry Statistics for Printing
Or take both in one feed
Yes - they stack into one transatlantic printing picture that neither completes alone.
Three alignments decide whether the merge holds. First, scope: SIC 2007 Division 18 is titled "Printing and reproduction of recorded media", while the Canadian label reads "Printing and related support activities" - near-twins, not identical twins, so decide once whether recorded-media reproduction belongs in your universe. Second, identity: numeric VECTORs and COORDINATEs meet alphanumeric CDIDs, so the join runs through a maintained crosswalk of series definitions. Third, measurement: thousands of dollars against index points and millions of pounds need a normalization layer - index rebasing for trend work, currency conversion only where dollar comparisons genuinely matter. We handle all three in the merge, delivered daily, weekly, or hourly - your call. Or take both in one feed.
API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
Fair questions
Is Statistics Canada — Manufacturing Data by NAICS 3231 better than UK ONS — Manufacturing & Industry Statistics for Printing?
Better at different jobs. The Canadian record owns dollar truth: monthly sales of goods manufactured for NAICS 3231 split across ten provinces and three territories, plus an annual ledger of 22 measures - total revenue, salaries and wages, opening and closing inventories, manufacturing value added - down to six-digit codes such as digital printing. The UK record owns time and structure: roughly 620 monthly periods of Division 18 output indices reaching back to the 1970s, plus product-level sales and business counts. Sample both, pick by fit.
Do the two datasets cover the same ground?
Only at the concept level. Both read their nation's printing sector through a national statistical office and both carry monthly-grain output series with an annual companion. Everything beneath diverges by design: Canada speaks in thousands of dollars by province under NAICS 3231; the UK speaks in index points for SIC 2007 Division 18 at the national level, with pounds reserved for turnover and value added. Even the sector boundaries differ - the British division folds in reproduction of recorded media, the Canadian label reads printing and related support activities.
Which dataset reaches further back in time?
The UK record, by decades. Its Index of Production series for Division 18 runs about 620 monthly periods back to the 1970s - the seasonally adjusted printing index (CDID K22W) reading 87.1 in June 2026 after 90.2 in May. The Canadian monthly shipments series begins in January 1992, though it compensates with an annual principal-statistics table covering 2012-2024. For cycle history choose the UK side; for recent dollar detail choose the Canadian side.
Which dataset should a market-sizing project sample first?
Decide by currency and map. If the question values the Canadian market in dollars and needs the province split - Ontario's seasonally adjusted NAICS 3231 shipments at 378,523 thousand dollars in May 2026 rising to 382,072 in June - start with the Canadian record. If the question tracks UK output momentum, product sales or the business population by size band and region, start with the UK record. Both arrive normalized to their documented field dictionaries.
Can Datadory deliver both datasets together?
Yes - alone or merged onto one printing-sector watchlist, delivered daily, weekly, or hourly, your call. Each arrives normalized to its documented dictionary with sample rows for inspection before anything ships. The joining work is mapping NAICS 3231 to SIC 2007 Division 18 despite the reproduction-of-recorded-media scope gap, aligning REF_DATE periods against CDID-keyed period columns, and reconciling thousands of dollars with index points and millions of pounds. We handle all three in the merge. Or take both in one feed.