Bobst has confirmed in a statement that it will not participate in any global trade shows in 2021 including drupa, while maintaining a limited participation in Asia.
Reducing its presence at industry trade shows, according to the company, is its way of finding new ways to engage with customers and dramatically reducing the environmental impact.
“Bobst is at the start of a new journey, which will enable us to engage with our customers in a quicker, more effective and more personalised manner, reducing the environmental burden and shaping the future of the packaging world,” the company said.
Smart factories, technology lounges and customer reference sites are now set as the preferred engagement model with clients.
“This new strategy supports the Bobst vision to shape the future of the packaging world, which also reflects Bobst’s values and responsibilities,” it added.
According to the company, as communication technologies offer new ways to share content, Bobst said it will evolve its current competence centres to the next level to engage with customers more effectively and to provide customers and prospects with new ways to access product and solution demonstrations.
“Over the last few years, the competence centres have been growing and the investments made are quite significant. They have become the preferred place to showcase live customer experiences and to validate investments,” it said.
Bobst added that this transformation will lead into new smart factories, which will encompass technology lounges, partnerships and application experts to demonstrate complete end-to-end solutions where customers will be able to engage with substrates processing, job preparation, colour management, printing, tool preparation and converting.
“We have started to virtualise the customer experience with live streaming demonstrations – across all equipment in our existing competence centres, providing an engaging customer experience with less traveling constraints. There will be further information on these new ways of engagement soon,” Bobst added.
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