Mega trade show drupa is just one year away from opening its doors, with the 12 month countdown about to begin for what is the most important event in print.
Slated to run for 11 days from June 16 at the Messe Centre in Dusseldorf, and known variously as the olympics of print and the mother of all trade shows, the next drupa has some 1830 exhibitors booked in, and will welcome more than a quarter of a million printers, almost one per cent of them from Australia, New Zealand and Oceania.
Theme for the 2020 show is Embrace the Future, an update on Touch the Future from the 2016 show. There will be five key highlight topics running through the show, print of course as the primary one, with packaging, functional printing, 3D printing and future technologies as the other four.
New this time will be DNA, drupa next age, which succeeds the drupa innovation park, and has a focus on start-ups as well as innovations from established players.
Printers attending drupa 2020 will notice a brand new Hall 1, which is a huge 12,000sqm pillar free space, and a spectacular new south entrance, which is 2100sqm in size and has a 20m high projecting roof canopy. Both are part of a €140m investment made by the Messe Centre, and both are currently under construction, due to be finished at the end of this year.
The biggest exhibitor is likely to be HP again, which has booked the whole of Hall 17. Heidelberg will be in Hall 1 as always. Supplier consolidation will see former rivals now on the same stands, with the likes of manroland Goss, Muller Martini and the Kolbus binding business now together. Fujifilm and Xerox may not be one company, but will be in the same hall. Landa nano technology will be at its third drupa, although no word yet on whether printers will be able to buy a press.
Print21 of course will have the country's most comprehensive drupa coverage before, during and after the show, with the ANZ print industry's senior journalists Wayne Robinson and Patrick Howard leading the reporting from what will be their eighth consecutive drupa.