Wide Format Imaging

The mood at 2008, the world’s largest and most important fair for the printing and media industry, can hardly be better. The investment climate is extremely good and has by far exceeded expectations. At the end of the 14-day fair the 1,971 exhibitors from 52 countries were unanimous in reporting an extremely high number of promising contacts and successful deals concluded. "drupa 2008 has sent out a clear signal: thanks to numerous innovations and new fields of business the print media sector is as agile as ever," summarises Albrecht Bolza-Schünemann, drupa President and CEO at Koenig & Bauer AG. "This is clearly reflected in the numerous deals concluded with virtually all key business regions." Overall, drupa exhibitors announced deals concluded worth more than Euro 10 b. Sectoral insiders suspect the actual investment sum to be considerably higher.

Around 391,000 visitors from 138 countries and 3,000 journalists from 84 countries travelled to Düsseldorf to gather information on innovations, further developments and new fields of business. Accounting for 59 % of visitors the proportion of international visitors rose by 4 percentage points over the last event four years ago. Commenting on the results for drupa 2008 Messe Düsseldorf CEO Werner Matthias Dornscheidt said: "This means drupa has further developed its global market significance and its international status. Given the difficult economic climate this is a remarkable success." He then added: "Happily, we were able to increase the proportion of overseas visitors here to 43 %." Particularly contributing to this growth were Asian and Latin American trade visitors with 7 % coming from South and Central America and 15 % from Asia (2004: 13.6 %). At a surprising level of 6 % the proportion of North American visitors remained constant. “We had anticipated slight drops not only because of the high level of the Euro,” explained trade fair boss. “But these figures also clearly show: drupa is a world beater and nothing moves in the print and media industry without it!”

And this was apparently also the sentiment of visitors who not only gave drupa excellent ratings (97 % rated the event positively) but also increased their average stay at the fair to 3.2 days (2004: 3 days). This figure is all the more remarkable since considerably more top managers were seen at drupa 2008 – 45 % over 42.2 % in 2004. "Our expectations of drupa 2008 were entirely fulfilled. We are particularly satisfied with the quality of contacts. Already by the second day we had had high quality talks with visitors from throughout the world. The number of orders taken has exceeded our expectations," said Martin Weickenmeier, Vice-President of drupa and CEO at Körber PaperLink Gmbh, stressing this drupa result.

From the point of view of the VDMA drupa 2008 also significantly exceeds expectations. "We were unsure in the run-up to drupa what customer behaviour to expect. However, the last two weeks showed that investments are planned and implemented even in a difficult market climate," confirmed Kai Büntemeyer, President of the Printing and Paper Technologies Association within the German Engineering Federation (VDMA).

"From the point of view of German print companies drupa is the most important trade fair for new print technologies – it increasingly acts as a source of ideas for new products and services," summarises Thomas Mayer General Manager of the German Printing and Media Industries Federation (Bundesverband Print und Medien). Through application examples, demonstrations and not least the Compass Sessions trade visitors were shown how the new technologies can be used for innovative print products and intelligent customer solutions."