The market research body identified the top five start-up opportunities for next year, with positive forecasts for trades such as landscaping and house building, but bad news for start-ups in the ‘Image Processing and Printing’ field.

Revenues across the sector, which is dominated by consumer photo processing operations, are set to fall by 15.4% over the next five years, according to IBISWorld.

Other sectors to avoid were service stations, computer maintenance, household equipment repairs and plant nurseries. The five best start-up opportunities were accounting, house construction, landscaping, plumbing and take-away food retailing.

The report said that Image Processing and Printing Services operators have been struggling for several years due to the digital revolution. Images are far less likely to be printed and are instead displayed online at sites like Facebook and Flickr or with digital photo frames.

IBISWorld released a report back in June with more bad news for the wider printing sphere, where it predicted that paper manufacturing would have the third-lowest growth figures for 2010-11 of any industry in Australia.

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