A lively impulse for the printing industry, in the form of a double stimulus: for investments (many the contracts signed at the fair) as well as for market analyses, thanks to the information on trends in demand provided by visitors from all over the world.
Drupa therefore has once more avowed itself and, despite the (expected) drop in attendance, it is still "the" world sector fair.
This is confirmed, without exception, by the Italian and foreign exhibitors that we visited in person and, more generally, by the comments and statements made at the end of the event. And it would even have beenso without the contribution of the companies that chose the most spectacular ways of “launching” their technologies, predictably picked up by the media – impossible not to mention the event organized by Landa to present its new color production nanotechnology (projected onto a huge screen several times a day for the entire duration of the fair) and the performance of the Cirque du Soleil offered by Xerox to thousands of guests.
Key figures. Here is some data from the press release issued at the end of the show, emblematic of the scope of the event, which we will report coming months in our media (with some previews in this selfsame issue of ItaliaImballaggio). Drupa 2012 lasted from 3rd to 16th May, animated by 1850 exhibitors and 314,500 visitors from over 130 countries, 75,500 less than in 2008. «This drop – President and CEO of Messe Dusseldorf Werner Matthias Dornscheidt comments – did not take anybody by surprise. In Germany alone, between 2000 and 2011, around 3,900 companies in the printing industry totalling over 61,000 employees closed down, and another 7,700 similarly so in the U.S., leading to an overall drop in the number of operators that could not but have its effects on the main sector fair. However, and this is the focal point, while the national delegations and business groups are more “streamlined”, on the other hand more and more top managers are seen to be on the move, and drupa, now more than ever, has become the decision makers fair (50.8% of the total, compared to 44.4% in 2008)». And likewise a fair for doing business. During the two weeks of events negotiations already started up elsewhere were concluded at the show, but new sales contracts were also signed, to such an extent as to inspire a widespread sense of confidence and optimism. According to the organizers’ statistics, during the event nearly half of the visitors placed orders.
The geography of demand. Another fact to be noted concerns international participation. Foreign operators were over 190 thousand, with peaks of particular importance for India (the country ranked second with 15,000 visitors, after Germany with 123 thousand accesses), followed by Belgium, France, Holland, Great Britain, USA, Switzerland and Italy. Particularly significant in addition the arrivals from Central and South America (8.8% versus 7% in 2008), especially from Brazil.
Operators’ interest was seen to centre on developments in automation and digital printing, hybrid technologies, web-to-print applications and low environmental impact solutions. Alive and growing lastly the interest in proposals used for printing and converting packaging.
The coming edition. Messe Düsseldorf has scheduled the coming Drupa from 2 to the 15th June 2016. The dates hence have been put off a month compared to usual, but the duration of the show is the same. Duration that many by now consider anachronistic: in the changing market conditions, this the virtually unanimous opinion that we registered during the fair, a show lasting some ten days would be more than adequate for the needs of the operators.
