DRUPA OPENS TO WORLD OF PRINT

The world’s biggest trade expo, drupa, has opened its doors to the global print community, and is set to welcome hundreds of thousands of print people from around the world over the next 11 days.

Running for the first time since 2016, this year’s event covers all 19 halls of the giant Messe Centre in Dusseldorf, and welcomes some 1437 exhibitors from 50 different countries.

Sustainability, connection, AI and the platform economy are set to be key themes at this year’s event, which will define print in the coming years. It is also clear from the early indicators that this will be the 'collaboration drupa', with technology developers of all types joining forces in various ways.

Along with the exhibits there are workshops, forums and educationals, with major sessions on sustainability, packaging and textiles.

The show is also a mighty social occasion, with the bars and restaurants of the Aldstadt ready to welcome printers for their apres-expo evenings. The Print21 ANZ drupafest party, set for award-winning brewery Frankenheim on Friday, is completely sold out.

Sabine Geldermann, director of drupa said, “Print is always evolving, and as print touches all industries, this drupa will reflect the global trends. Printers coming to drupa can expect a preview of the industry that print will become, an industry that will be impacted by the global mega trends, and an industry that offers real opportunity.

“There will be amazing exhibits, as print technology pivots to meet the needs of consumers and brand owners. There will also be a host of unmissable forums where experts, brand owners and speakers from outside the industry will share their insights.”

It is clear that packaging will play its biggest ever role at drupa, in fact more than half of the stands will have packaging developments on them. Dr Andreas Pleßke, president of drupa and CEO at Koenig & Bauer, said, “The growth in populations, and in the developing world the rapid growth of the middle classes, will for certain drive packaging growth in both developed and developing countries, particularly in food, beverage, pharma and cosmetics.”

Pleßke said that three key trends will be addressed at the show; sustainability, digitisation, and skill and labour shortages. He said sustainability was being driven by brand owners, young people and regulation.

drupa 2024 will have digitisation as one of its core components, as it offers print businesses the opportunity to diversify, and to capture new short-run on-demand market opportunities. There will for instance be an entire textile digital print micro-factory running throughout the show. Digitisation of workflow will also be a key component.

According to Pleßke, the skills and labour shortage would be addressed by automation, digitisation, AI and robots, all of which would be on display at drupa.

This will be the first drupa since 2016, although the expo did run a short online show in 2021 while the world was in the midst of a Covid lockdown. The managing director of Messe Centre, Erhard Weinkamp, said, "The return of person-to-person drupa is necessary. The show is also about connection, and we have had no interest from exhibitors in running further online events, they want face-to-face.”