Team Messe Dusseldorf, comprising of Sabine Geldermann, director at Drupa, and Dr Ink Markus Heering of VDMA, focused their presentations on touchpoints that will take centre stage at the show, while Medha Virkar of MMS and Faheem Agboatwala, president of BMPA, spoke on what they think will transpire at the show.

Drupa is no longer Drucken and Papier, an interesting new Drupa acrostic summed up the direction in which the show is moving. Drupa now stands for Digitisation, Rapid manufacturing, Utilities, Packaging, and Applications. The repositioned Drupa will now focus on application growth and future technology – functional printing, interactive packaging and utility applications which include digital inkjet printing on ceramics and laminate flooring.

“The print and media industry is changing. New technologies are establishing themselves. With the highlight themes of print, functional printing, packaging production, multichannel, 3D printing and green printing, we are responding to this change and are opening up new visitor target groups with state-of-the-art technologies and new solutions,” said Geldermann while highlighting the idea behind the above touchpoints.

Heering of VDMA, said a fourth revolution for the industry is taking place, terming it Industry 4.0 and Print 4.0, where digital and smart interactivity between different equipment will drive the print industry. “Though the convention continue its 80-90% march, digital printing is growing at 10-15%,” said Heering. “In applications, one can see around 5,000 ceramic print shops using inkjet and 170 gravure printing machines produce laminate flooring.”

He highlighted how 3D and rapid manufacturing, though hyped at present, will impact the future, particularly where machine manufacturers are using the technology to produce interesting spare parts for sophisticated products, for example, the A380 aircrafts spare parts are produced using additive manufacturing technology. “At present it is a B2B case, but it will become more enhanced when the technology enters the realm of B2C segments,” he said.

The Drupa 2012 edition saw visitors with nearly 14,000 footfalls become the second largest contingent after the Germans.