Next year’s drupa will present printers with growth opportunities and solutions under the Touch the Future tagline.
Messe Dusseldorf CEO Werner Dornscheidt and VDMA general manager Markus Heering gave lengthy indepth presentations to attendees at the Sydney Opera House last night, highlighting the way drupa is changing to meet the changing market.
With a new strategic alignment, a shortened duration of 11 days, new branding and a shortened three-year cycle, the leading international trade show for print and cross-media solutions is heading for the starting line. This drupa will focus on innovation in the sector and provide a platform for presenting future technologies. The primary focus is on growing trends of tomorrow in the areas of print, packaging production, multichannel communications, 3D printing, functional printing and green printing.
Dornscheidt says, “Print is repositioning and so is drupa. Digitalisation, personalisation of print, and cross media integration are major developing themes and drupa will reflect this. Packaging printing and industrial (functional) printing are rapidly growing areas, and again drupa will present the opportunities in these important sectors.” According to Dornscheidt packaging print is on target to hit a global figure of US$975bn by 2018, while industrial/functional print (printing on ceramics, metals, glass, plastics) is surging to US$100m by the end of the decade, more than double its US$44m 2013 figure.
The drupa innovation parc (dip) and the drupa cube will play a more prominent role. Dornsheidt says, “Our redesign of drupa is on the right track, evidenced by the number of returning key exhibitors and the number of start-up companies that will be at the show.”
“This drupa will present answers to the questions that printers have such as which technologies are relevant, which solutions will drive my business.”
There will be around 1500 exhibitors from 50 countries, which is some 20 per cent less than last time when there were 1844 exhibitors. Dornscheidt says, “It is true that the number of exhibitors is lower than drupa 2012, due to mergers and market shakeouts, but this has no effect on the quality of drupa itself.”
The 2016 drupa will take the same full allocation of all 19 halls at the Messe Centre with some companies dramatically increasing their space, Landa for instance, which is aiming to launch its nano press, will double its space to 3000sqm.
Budgets for exhibitors remain eye-watering, the list price for Landa’s raw stand space alone for instance is Euro924,750 or $1.45m Aussie dollars, and that excludes everything else.
Dornscheidt believes that rival show Ipex is finished, saying it had priced itself out of the market and now that drupa was on a three year cycle there was no room for it to come back, and no desire from the manufacturers to have it.
In fact drupa itself has not been immune to the downturn in the print exhibition world, numbers at the 2012 show were 315,000, which was 23 per cent down on the 391,000 that attended the 2008 show. The show peaked in 2000 when it in a whoppping 425,000 printers from around the world.
Markus Heering gave a comprehensive talk on development in manufacturing in Industry 4.0 phase of digitalisation, which in print 4.0 includes end to end digital workflow.
A new drupa app will guide visitors around the show according to their areas of interest. Entry tickets, which include free public transport in and around Dusseldorf, will be heavily discounted if bought online in advance rather than at the show itself. Dornscheidt said the city authorities were cracking down on tour companies selling hotel space at excessive mark-ups, and had already banned several from operating. He says only ‘normal premiums’ would apply to room rates.
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