The research also shows that despite the challenges facing the industry, few are looking to cut staff and consolidate.

The survey of 800 industry figures revealed that the top three reasons for visiting Drupa are to look for new market opportunities, learn about market trends, and get a general overview while networking.

People are most looking forward to exploring digital printing (68.3%), followed by offset printing (51.3%), automisation/workflow (32.7%), web-to-print (28.3%), sustainability (24.7%), inket (23.7%) and inks/paper (23.7%).

Their key areas of concern are moving the business forward (63.5%), considering expansion (39.7%) and retaining customers (24.8%).

To overcome industry challenges they plan to improve productivity (44.4%), move into new market areas (40.7%), invest (37.4%), review operations (28.5%), expand capacity (28.1%), cut costs (27.1%) and automate (26.3%). There is little enthusiasm for cutting staff (6.2%), merging (5.6%) and closing operations (3.2%).

A majority of Drupa visitors will be offset printers (62.2%) and digital printers (53.2%) with fewer focused on services (38.2%) and pre-press (36.5%).

The survey also showed that phone is the preferred way to communicate, followed by email and social media. Social media is used by 81% of those going to Drupa.

All continents took part in the survey. Australia, Germany, UK, Brazil, Turkey, Greece, India, and Italy were the key contributors.

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