“It was a quiet opening, quite unlike the last year. Who would be better than the mentors of the industry to open the show,” said Tushar Dhote, chairman of Pamex. “So we had the presidents of print industry associations – BMPA, MMS, NPES, association from China and Japan to inaugurate the show.”

There were 300+ exhibitors in the three halls covering 8,500 sq/m, all preparing to showcase their products as the show began at 10am this morning.

“Building upon the success of the previous edition, we had expected the show to be much larger. We expected the numbers to grow by 50%, but it has grown by 15%,” said Anil Arora, the director of Print-Packaging.com, the organiser of the show. He cited the uncertainty in the economy triggered due to the unified tax system, as the reason. “Many machines which were meant to be shown here could not arrive in time. That has resulted in exhibitor dropouts, or exhibitors shrinking the size of their stands.”

Despite the negatives, Arora said, we see this as a growth. “Once things in the unified taxation settle down and the economy improves, we hope it will be a much bigger growth next time.”

The visitor numbers in the last edition were 20,000 unique visitors with a footfall of 40,000. In this edition, Arora said, this number is sure to go up. “There are top printers who make it a point to visit the show, but we have made a conscious effort to reach out to smaller towns,” said Arora.

PrintWeek India saw a group of 69 printers from Ichalkaranji (Maharashtra) and 39 printers from Kerala. There will be more tomorrow, said an optimistic Dhote. He added, “Not just the number, we have more serious visitors at the show, who come not only to see technology, but also buy them.”

And this was reflected in the number of sales announced today. Ample Graphics announced the sale of a lamination machine to Laxmi Narayan Print and Pack from Ambernath; Ma Prints from Bengaluru has picked up few Zonkhe machines; Max Packaging from Ahmedabad has signed a deal for a Five Star double-head saddle stitching machine; Monotech signed a deal with Pressline where it will jointly develop a high-speed digital inkjet press to cater to the newspaper, transactional and book printing markets worldwide. Monotech also announced the sale of a Scodix press to United Multicolours in Pune. There were more.