Page 30 - Print 21 Magazine Jul-Aug 2020

drupa
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also stopped producing its 145cm and 164cm large format presses. Its focus is on its B1 and B2 offset presses, and particularly where it sees growth opportunities in the packaging market, where it has strong competition from KBA and manroland.
In the cold light of day its decision to exit drupa is entirely reasonable from a numbers perspective. No doubt though it will impact on the perception of the business.
What of drupa?
The big question though is what of drupa itself, now cut to nine days? In this recent era of trade show collapses – two of what were the big four, Ipex and Print, are both now history, along with dozens of smaller shows – the mother of all trade shows is still able to sell all its floorspace across 18 halls. And Heidelberg is just one of 1500 exhibitors, and no longer the biggest. In 2016 that claim went to another exhibitor for the first time, HP, also set to be the biggest this time around, although Print21 understands it has quietly cut its space in half. Two of Heidelberg’s direct rivals, Komori
and manroland, have also pulled out, meaning the show floor will have a significantly reduced heavy metal presence. Koenig & Bauer is going to
be there. RMGT has not yet said it will not be there. It has been a big supporter of trade shows, it was the only offset company at the last two PacPrints, and the only one at the final Ipex.
But the Covid uncertainties hanging over drupa that Heidelberg CEO Rainer Hunsdorfer cited are real enough. The host facility for drupa – Düsseldorf’s Messe Centre – will run its first post-Covid fair in September, a caravan show,
with others to follow from October onwards. Organisers have to instigate strict hygiene protocols, including mandatory face masks, social distancing with security staff on the floor enforcing minimum distancing between visitors, and no on-stand parties.
If they are still in force by drupa it will be a different show.
If there is still a whiff of Covid
in the air print bosses from all over the world may think twice about mixing with other printers from all over the world, or letting their staff go. People from countries including those providing big visitor numbers to drupa, like the US and China,
30 Print21 JULY/AUGUST 2020
are currently banned from entering Europe. The ban may be lifted, but everyone knows, as long as the virus remains, it may be restored at the drop of a hat.
And what of the after-hours Aldstadt, an integral part of the show, hard to imagine social distancing after a glass or two of black nectar has been sunk in the various Irish bars. And it will be even harder to get a seat at the usually packed restaurants.
Getting to the show may also be problematic. The U-Bahn 78 to the Messe Centre is always jam-packed in the morning, close-up standing room only, and the same late afternoon coming back. Will printers be happy to wait four or six times as long for a tram, do that many trams even exist?
A giant show like drupa is a volume business; exhibitors pay big bucks to be there because they will see huge numbers of potential buyers come onto their stands. This time out they were expecting around a quarter of a million printers to come through the doors. If social distancing has to be enforced those numbers will have to be chopped back significantly. That may make it easier to walk around what are usually crowded aisles, but will it deliver the footfall exhibitors pay for?
No-one yet knows how long the Covid hygiene measures will be necessary for. The rescheduled drupa will take place in nine months’ time, April 20-28, which is a way off, but decisions by exhibitors will need to be made six months
out, which is only three months away. Printers themselves can leave it later. Australians of course are currently banned from leaving the country anyway.
Bobst and Xerox have already made their decision, and with Heidelberg, Komori and manroland that means five of what were the Top
Above
20 big exhibitors are out. There are 1500 smaller exhibitors still in.
The loss of the trade show business is a major blow to Düsseldorf city revenues. In 2019 the Messe Centre received 1.4 million visitors. One in every three hotel rooms booked in Düsseldorf is a by trade fair visitor, its Airbnb ratio will be even higher. The trade fairs generate a mighty €576m in annual taxes for the city. There is no doubt that everyone in Düsseldorf, from taxi drivers to bar owners to hoteliers is willing the show to carry on, or that the state and federal governments will be under intense pressure from every type of business to let the show go on, and unhindered.
The drupa organiser will be acutely aware of the fate of its one- time rival Ipex, which crumbled almost overnight in 2012 when, déjà vu, Heidelberg pulled out. Once it had gone most other major vendors followed suit. The 2014 show limped on, but it was a sad shadow of its former self, and now is no more.
The drupa event is different in that it is the unchallenged market leader, it has always been the core of the global printing industry, and there are a host of companies this time around who have new technologies in new markets that they want to get on the show floor – digital packaging systems being key among them.
And therein may lay the future for drupa, with the new technologies in new markets from new players. Companies like the major digital developers aiming to create a digital packaging market,
for both fibre and flexible packaging. Smaller players bringing cloud-based innovation. Those linking print and data.Thosetakingexistingpiecesof print equipment, like cutting tables, and showing new applications in unrelated industries, as printers are doing during the Covid crisis with mask manufacture.
Nothing stays the same, or so the sages would have us believe, and our experience in the past three decades has certainly proved that. Pop stars like Madonna and David Bowie stayed at the top for so long through constantly reinventing themselves. Even if Covid has completely gone by next April, it seems the days of drupa being a heavy metal show are fast receding into the history books. But if it too can reinvent itself, as the core location for printers to connect with new technologies and new business opportunities, then its future could be as bright as its past. 21
Drupa: the winds of change are blowing