More than 2000 industry types from Australia and New Zealand made the trip to Düsseldorf in May for the world’s largest printing trade show. This is in line with attendance at previous shows.
In a Post Show Report, Sabine Geldermann, director drupa, confirmed that of the more than 260,000 industry visitors to the Dusseldorf Messe, Australian and Oceania made up one percent. It appears the urge to travel and inspect new printing technologies is still strong in Australian and New Zealand printers, despite a drop of almost 20% in the total visitors to the show.
In a typically upbeat review of the show, the organisers said there were 1,828 exhibitors from 54 countries with the printing and packaging sectors understandably leading the way. Visitors came from 183 countries with 75% coming from outside Germany. Organisers maintain the investment climate was much better than in the previous shows with a reported 65% of visitors indicating they had concrete intentions of buying new equipment.
Despite the show being billed as the inkjet and digital drupa, the main market focus was still fairly traditional. When calculating visitor responses the organisers found sheetfed offset printing was top of mind with 54 percent of visitors nominating it as their primary area of interest above the 53 percent that said digital print including inkjet. Web-fed offset followed with 17%, ahead of flexography at 16%.
Despite the intense publicity around Benny Landa’s Nanography, only three percent of visitors nominated it as their major interest. Even as the drupa organisers promoted the show’s new positioning with a focus on topics it considers to have growth potential, such as 3-D and functional printing, it seems the printing industry is focused on proven offset and digital technologies.
The next drupa is already on the drawing boards, locked in for June 23-July 3 2020.