drupa tour highlights four megatrends

Giant print trade show drupa has been on tour in South East Asia, drumming up support for the 2020 show from emerging economies and highlighting the megatrends it sees impacting the industry.

The trends presentation came from leading drupa exhibitors meeting for future-workshops – and in this context identified four megatrends as potentially disrupting today's routines in the printing and packaging industry.

The trends are artificial intelligence, connected customer, platform economy, and circular economy. "These trends will profoundly change process flows in both the printing and packaging industries,” stresses Markus Heering, managing director of the VDMA Printing and Paper Technology Association. “Especially in the increasingly globalised market environment, it is going to be vital for suppliers of printing and finishing services to keep a close eye on the technological future and to maintain their own competitiveness through appropriate investments.”

The drupa tour went to Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh, Kuala Lumpur, and Bangkok, and was presented in conjunction with the local printing associations.

At all conferences, drupa director Sabine Geldermann presented the current status of preparations, as well as current exhibitor figures. She also explained the concept of three drupa touchpoints as special exhibition areas, as well as the drupa cube's conference programme, and in addition the new meeting zone between start-ups and established exhibitors – drupa dna.

Eight drupa exhibitors presented on concrete Print 4.0 approaches – taking up the named megatrends. They included press manufacturers such as Heidelberg, Koenig & Bauer, Windmöller & Hölscher and HC Moog, which will be presenting digitally networked, highly automated technology for the press hall.

In addition, suppliers of post-press and finishing solutions, such as Muller Martini; Kurz; Polar-Mohr; and the specialist for light-based drying and curing technology, IST-Metz, gave an outlook to the future in their respective specialist areas. This included fully networked digital cutting systems; fully automated Finishing 4.0 for cutting, stitching and binding brochures and books of variable formats;  and digital foiling for metallising and seamless finishing of printed products – whether in commercial printing, industrial printing, or packaging.

Panel discussions rounded off all the four specialist conferences.

The 2020 drupa takes place from 16–26 June, with more than 250,000 printers expected to converge on Düsseldorf for the eleven day event, including many from Australia and New Zealand.