OTTAWA—The positive trend and good performance from national printing shipments that started earlier in the year seems to be holding up. With the exception of March, every month this year has surpassed the figures for the corresponding month in 2011. For the first time in a long, long while the year-to-date figure is in the positive territory (up 2.7% from the same time in 2011). Welcome back printing industry.

Here are the monthly printing shipments (in millions) for July and August:

Shipments	2012	2011	% change
July	$611.1	$548.7	+11.4%
August	$680.0	$650.9	+4.5%