Exhibitor's Quotes

Albrecht Bolza-Schünemann
CEO of KBA and President
of drupa
© Messe Düsseldorf GmbH

Exhibitors of drupa 2008 comment on two extremely successful trade fair weeks

Agfa Graphics, Stefaan Vanhooren, President
Agfa Graphics today announced that drupa 2008 has been a great success. The company's stylish stand caught the eye of the crowds and its innovative solutions met with general approval from numerous print professionals. It shows that our strategy is the right one. Innovations have cleary convinced our visitors. Drupa 2008 has been a success for us and hopefully for the whole graphic arts industry.

Apollo Sheeters, Michael Wilkinson, General Sales Manager
drupa got us off to a very good start, with some interesting leads from South America, South Africa and Egypt.

Ashe Converting Equipment, John Godbold, Managing Director
drupa is a good show – no doubt about it. We had good levels of enquiries and saw many people.

Canon Europe, David Preskett, European Marketing Director, Professional Solutions
drupa 2008 has been a very successful show for us. We welcomed a large number of visitors at our stand and have been tremendously busy. Our focus on real business issues, that our customers are facing and how we can help their businesses to grow, has struck a real chord with our customers. We have been particularly impressed by the quality of the visitors and we have closed a large number of deals on stand. With drupa 2008 just gone, we look forward to being back in 2012.

CIP4 Organization, James Harvey, Executive Director
Nothing puts the focus, and attracts the drupa visitor, to new technologies like the drupa innovation parc. If you?re a first-time drupa exhibitor or even a major drupa exhibitor with an exciting new technology or solution, this is the place to be!

Domino Printing Sciences, Sheila Richardson, Group Marketing Services Manager
Domino Printing Sciences’ Group Marketing Services Manager, Sheila Richardson, commented that once again, drupa had been extremely successful for the UK-based inkjet solutions provider. Domino’s L400 thermal inkjet printer, K150 drop-on-demand printer, and high speed Bitjet v4.5 binary inkjet system, were all on show for the first time at a major global printing event, with Richardson reporting a number of on-stand sales. “Our high-speed, variable data inkjet products have enjoyed a genuine commercial interest from a wide range of international customers, which clearly reflects the quality of visitor to drupa”, says Richardson.

Duplo International Ltd, Christophe Bourreau, Subsidiary Managing Director
Sales through our four subsidiary offices of France, Italy, Poland and the UK have amounted to just under 1,000,000 euros. We have taken a huge number of firm orders from day one and our leads are up 70% compared to this point of the show four years ago. A high number of orders had been placed with the company’s export distributors.

Eastman Kodak Company, Antonio M. Perez, Chairman and CEO
drupa 2008 provided Kodak with a global platform to showcase our offset class output solutions and integrated portfolio. In addition to successfully introducing Kodak's Stream Inkjet Technology, we secured hundreds of orders and thousands of sales leads from around the world and across the entire portfolio. Kodak’s drupa success is further proof that our commitment to helping customers grow their businesses -- in digital, conventional and blended production settings -- is resonating throughout the industry.


EFI, Paul Cripps, Managing Director EMEA
We’re looking back on a very successful show. In line with this year’s theme, “One world, one drupa”, we have seen ever increasing numbers of visitors from abroad. This is reflected in the high-quality leads captured and the many deals closed, with exceptionally strong sales, especially from Eastern Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. We’ve also secured our first beta customer in Western Europe for the VUTEk DS Series digital screen printer further to the technology demo at the show. We’re certainly looking forward to drupa 2012!

Epson Europe, Yvonne Myhill, Marketing
The show proved as good as always.

EskoArtwork, Carsten Knudsen CEO
With packaging being a global business, and EskoArtwork being a global company, drupa is the perfect and unique industry platform to connect with our customers and partners. At this drupa, the interest in our range of solutions has been phenomenal, especially in our packaging tools, flexo platesetting systems and commercial print workflows. EskoArtwork orders for packaging will end up well over 50% higher than the combined results of Esko and Artwork Systems in 2004. We are very pleased to see how well the integration of EskoArtwork has been accepted by our customers and partners in the industry.

GMG, Christian Schwarze, worldwide sales director
Drupa has given us a global showcase from one booth and totally exceeded our expectations. It has been the perfect opportunity to build our brand in new, emerging markets, particularly Latin Anerica, India and China. It will have a major impact on our business as a result.

Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG, Bernhard Schreier, Chairman of the Board
My expectations were conservative. But the trade fair went better than expected. We have taken over 2,500 orders from 85 countries, a quarter of them from Germany. The percentage of orders from the US and China was also high.

Hewlett Packard, Indigo Division, Alon Bar-Shany, Vice President and General Manager
drupa 2008 has been a fantastic show for HP that has exceeded our high expectations. We are delighted with the breadth of visitors, both in terms of geographical spread and numbers, and the wide range of sectors represented. We have significantly exceeded our targets for both orders and leads generated, a reflection on the fact that digital is now a mainstream technology, bringing real benefits for our customers’ profitability. The reception to new solutions introduced at the show such as the HP Indigo 7000, HP Indigo WS6000, HP Inkjet Web Press, HP Designjet L65500 and SmartStream Digital Workflow portfolio cements HP’s leadership in Graphic Arts solutions for the printing industry.

Komori, Junya Shimada, President of Komori International Europe
It’s clear that Drupa continues to expand its boundaries internationally. It’s the perfect opportunity to assess global markets in a single snapshot. From here we have a clear view of what markets are dormant, which are mature and which are buoyant and growing. We have welcomed buyers and prospects from countries that we don’t usually expect to see. The broad geographical spread is the most significant factor with buyers ranging all the way from Latin America to Latvia. The interest is strong across B2, B1 and web presses and we have made significant sales to companies around the world.

Manroland, Gerd Finkbeiner, Chairman of the Board
“We are not operating in a critical industry but the perception of our industry is critical,“ said Finkbeiner commenting on the general mood and added “we have made a clearly positive statement against this. With a wide variety of innovations and further developments we have demonstrated benefits for our customers and our customers’ customers. We have done everything to also improve the percetion of print. For manroland it is motivating to see that the trade fair clearly exceeded expectations. We have achieved our targets and taken roughly as many orders as at drupa four years ago. manroland took orders worth a medium triple-digit million figure at drupa.

Moll Equipment Ltd, Christopher Wells, Sales Manager
Well worth coming - there was a consistent flow of visitors and good levels of interest.

Press-Sense, Shelagh Hammer, Vice President Marketing
With Business Flow Automation being one of the drupa highlights, we are delighted to say the show has been an enormous success for us. We presented our technology at around 25 demonstration points on our own and our partner booths, setting our mark at the show and efficiently reaching international customers and partners. Drupa is definitely the platform to get a good feel of where the industry is going from a market and technological perspective.

PrintCity, John Dangelmaier, President
PrintCity has celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2008 with its most successful drupa show ever. Our alliance has grown in continuous member activity in recent years but we are always pleased to be exhibiting as a world leading group of networking, technology driven, businesses here at drupa. We look forward now to drupa 2012…

Punch Graphix (Xeikon/Basysprint), Paul Willems, Chief Marketing Officer
All in all, drupa has been a very positive event for us, attracting well-educated and global decision makers from all continents. And this time round, digital printing has been fully accepted as a matured and mainstream technology in the industry, whereby Xeikon and Basysprint are clearly on the radar of prospective buyers. To continue the drupa momentum, we are shipping all our equipment from Düsseldorf to the US, bringing drupa closer to those who were not able to attend.

Quite Software (dip-exhibitor), Charles James, Director
The show has been Great!!! The dip staff has been wonderful. We were able to set up quickly and storages was close by. Also, the food and lounge was very nice and the wait staff very friendly and professional.

Ricoh Europe PLC, Graham Moore, Director Production Printing
drupa 2008, our first, has been a great success for the Ricoh Group helping us towards our goal to become a leading force in production printing. We have met with visitors from a truly international audience who confirmed their confidence in Ricoh´s production printing solutions. We are looking forward to building upon our success from the show and to seeing everybody again in 2012.

Frank Romano, Professor Emeritus RIT School of Print Media (USA)
Drupa is more than miles of aisles and stands that are grand; Drupa is also about ideas and innovations. The Drupa Innovation Parc is a brilliant idea about brilliant ideas. It brought the best and brightest of new workflow, software, and systems together in one place at one time. Dip is the brainchild of Bernd Zipper, who combines creative flair and technical insight to educate thousands of visitors through presentations, demonstrations, and publications. Dip is what makes Drupa a unique event.

Screen, Tim Taylor, Marketing Manager
This has been the best ever Drupa for Screen. It’s been a fantastic opportunity to demonstrate our vision for a digital future in print. We have shown the broadest range of digital print technologies for the broadest range of applications, spanning labels, transactional, newspapers, commercial and large format. Plus we have sold more CTP units here than at any other show.

Steinemann Technology AG Jürg Spittler, Vice President and Graphic Division Manager
Drupa was a resounding success for us. We sold substantially more machines that expected with customers coming abroad who we had not met before. Amongst others a print shop from Syria spontaneously opted for our rotary sceen and flexographic printing press HIBI 107 worth € 700,000.

Ultrachem, Tony Brinton, Managing Director
Very pleased with the location of our stand in Hall 6 and the level of enquries. We have seen all the right people and will certainly more than cover our cost of exhibiting.

Vacuumatic, Mark Booth, Product Manager
Delighted with the outcome of drupa – took more and more enquires each day, with over 90 on the fifth day.

Watkiss Automation, Jo Watkiss, Director
I was very pleased with the outcome of drupa – I feel quietly satisfied, with good enquiry levels and a good hall location.

Xaar, Phil Eaves, sales and marketing director
Xaar inkjet has touched all corners of the world at this show. Our ground breaking technology has attracted huge international interest from manufacturers and printers alike. It’s clear from our meetings here that inkjet is only just scratching the surface of this industry. The next few years promise to be explosive!

Xerox Europe, Valentin Govaerts, Senior Vice President, Production and Graphic Arts Industry
One constant at any drupa is that companies will always share their biggest news. At drupa 2008 Xerox certainly had its share. We showed that we have the technology to lead the industry right now by launching the iGen4, showed off our continuous feed line, and introduced versatile products like the DocuColor 5000AP and Xerox 700 Digital Colour Press. But we also showed that we’re going to push the envelope in the future with concepts such as the ConceptColor 220 and our breakthrough cured gel inks. It’s easy for the end of drupa to feel like crossing a finish line, but the race never ends. Xerox has shown it’s going to stay in the lead.

David Zwang, Consultant (USA)
To me DIP is a real service to the industry. It really gives the small startup an opportunity, that they would not normally have, and I always make it a point to see what each of the participants have to offer. Bernd really understands their situation, and creates a 'big booth' feeling for a small booth budget, so they can show us all what they have and how it can help us ride the wave of solid production and technology into the future.