The world’s biggest trade fair drupa opens its doors today, and promises to show printers the way forward as the global industry struggles to recalibrate itself.
More than 300,000 printers – including many Aussies – will walk through the giant halls of the Dusseldorf Messe Centre over the next eleven days searching for answers, as the new digital world threatens to leave them behind, with drupa and the exhibitors claiming they will provide those answers.
Process automation will be a key theme, as technology developers seek to take human touch out of print production, and seek to integrate print with the digital world. In terms of the technology itself inkjet printing will be writ large across the 19 halls, with a plethora of new inkjet print systems set to bound onto the global stage.
Australian Printer readers will be receiving daily news updates direct from the show from the country’s most experienced reporting team, bringing all the latest developments as they happen.
In a sign of the times this drupa is the first in living memory that does not have Heidelberg as the biggest exhibitor, that title goes to HP, which has the whole of Hall 17 at 6,200sqm, where it will show more than 50 printing systems covering a huge range of applications.
Heidelberg is in its traditional Hall 1, although it is sharing it with a number of partners, and will launch its B1 inkjet press, the Primefire, co-developed with Fujifilm, and which will become the world’s first inkjet B1 press.
Landa will have double the space it took in 2012, with Benny Landa himself giving five presentations a day in the Landa theatre, where three presses will be on show, including two B1 sheetfeds, one of which will be a perfector. Landa will not be shipping for another year at least though.
Fuji Xerox, Canon, Ricoh, Konica Minolta and Xeikon will all have new digital presses, most will be launching inkjet as well as toner. The big offset manufacturers KBA, Komori and Ryobi will also be showing digital presses, while manroland will have its folding superstructure on the back end of digital presses.
Exhibitors have shared with the world’s print trade media their aim to get their software off individual printers’ servers and into the cloud. They claim it is less expensive, there are no upgrades required and it will be more secure.
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