Marcus Timson

This past week FuturePrint visited Drupa with a quest for the best stories. So as I walked around the halls I wanted to flag up the best stories I saw with great positioning, powerful purpose and well thought through booth design all underpinned by strong messaging and narrative. So here we go so far…more to follow this week for my second leg….

In Hall 8a, Canon's "Power to Move" theme for Drupa certainly was the most powerful example of effective storytelling at least of the large exhibitors at the show. The theme encapsulates Canon’s vision for the future of the print industry. The"Power to Move" theme reflects Canon's commitment to empowering print service providers to adapt, grow, and succeed in a dynamic, ever-evolving market. Starting with the core, at the centre of their 4,600 sqm booth, Canon’s booth design provides a journey for the visitor with a multi-sensory exploration of print’s emotional impact and how imaging experiences can enrich lives and businesses. The journey then emanates out from The Core, where Canon’s technologies are arranged by industry segment: Commercial Print, Publishing (including books), Promotional Communications (including direct mail and retail), Labels and Packaging, Interior Décor, as well as Inhouse and CAD printing. Across the stand, production solutions will deliver a diverse range of live applications reflecting the work mix of customers in these segments. Whether visitors are interested in inkjet or toner, colour or mono, small or wide format, Canon experts are on hand to guide print businesses of all types and sizes to the best digital print technology, workflow and print media choices for them - taking into account their operations, production volumes, customer profiles and growth aspirations.

In Hall 3 Kavalan - stories are at their most powerful when they are enmeshed with a powerful mission and purpose. To rid the wide format sector of toxic PVC materials is exactly this, and since the launch of Kavalan, they have made great strides by creating a compelling brand with high awareness and respect in the market, underpinned by scientific research, an LCA and a very powerful Eco-Calculator. The success of Kavalan is such an inspiring story. Nova and her colleagues created the brand and built as the number 1 sustainable material for wide format printing in Europe in a super fast time! 

In Hall 9 GelatoConnect is a platform that revolutionises the print industry by connecting global print partners with customers through its technology. The story began with the vision to democratise local printing, making it more accessible, sustainable, and efficient. By leveraging a network of print hubs worldwide, GelatoConnect enables businesses to print locally, reducing shipping distances, delivery times, and carbon footprints. The platform provides a seamless interface for managing orders, ensuring high-quality print products while supporting local economies. GelatoConnect's innovative approach addresses the challenges of traditional print logistics, offering a smarter, eco-friendly solution for global printing needs.

In Hall 7a Four Pees' Atomyx is a cutting-edge solution developed to revolutionise prepress and print production workflows. The story of Atomyx began with a mission to address the complexities and inefficiencies in print production. By integrating advanced automation and management tools, Atomyx streamlines tasks such as colour consistency, job tracking, and quality control, reducing the need for manual intervention. This innovation enables print service providers to enhance productivity, minimise errors, and ensure consistent, high-quality outputs. Atomyx represents Four Pees' commitment to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the printing industry through smart technology.

In Hall 9 Neos is a new company dedicated to developing and designing innovative technologies in digital printing. The team consists of highly skilled technicians with extensive knowledge in digital printing and related fields. The wealth of experience enables Neos to meet the market's demands and customisation needs. On their stand they display the Bombardier and Fighter printer modules, their approach is to design technology solutions that suit perfectly the specific application set and manufacturing process of a specific industry with a modular and flexible tech platform. In addition, what Neos apart is an ability to design and manufacture every component of their machines, from mechanics and electronics to software and color management.

In Hall 5 People & Technology provide a highly unique service that monitors the performance, cleans and improves inkjet heads, saving producers and users time and money. For the inkjet head producer, the better equipped they are to continually improve the head so it works more effectively, for longer. For end users, inkjet heads are also a sizeable investment. So if one needs replacing, it's both disruptive as well as costly, and a huge waste particularly if the head can be saved by going through a thorough cleaning process. Once cleaned they are then tested with P&T's technology to ensure the head is working sufficiently well on the other side to be sent back to the customer to be put back to work in production.

In addition, at Drupa, P&T are also showcasing a technology for printing directly onto PVC or aluminum profiles.  Live printing 2 pre-treatment + primer + CMYK + varnish on PVC profiles to create infinite possibilities in door and window decoration providing the ultimate solution to complete the design of interiors and facades.

In Hall 3 on the ESMA Pavilion, the LabelSaver. It was nice to catch up with Oliver Kammann and discover more about this direct-to-shape (DtS) inkjet platform, with robotic handling system, using aqueous inks. LabelSaver has been developed in collaboration with K-Flow Consulting (3D81–5) in process development, O&PM Europa in aqueous primers and ideeGO (3D81–4) in inkjet integration. This innovative system marks a significant advancement in digital-printing technology. The LabelSaver offers unique capabilities for printing DtS onto non-porous substrates, such as plastics, compounds and metals. It uses both aqueous and UV-curable inks, with output range of between 300–800 articles per hour.

Last but not least, a must see is in Hall 17, the giant HP needed an entire hall to themselves to effectively show their complete digital printing product portfolio which of course is both impressive and inspiring - I was drawn to the technology driving much if both the machines but also the print shops themselves. The need to leverage technology to solve the growing skill shortage problem and drive efficiency and productivity is vital and HP had an impressive area dedicated to this. Additionally, I liked the sector focused on new applications for the future.

In addition, HP has also launched an extensive sustainability programme led by Carlos Lahoz, and it was great to see this come together after we featured this earlier in the year with a series of films. If you want to find out more, why not check out the films! Follow this link.

That’s all for now, we will be returning 5-6 June and will share via another post likely after the show now. Thanks to all who we saw!