So how was it for you – Ipex 2014

The world’s biggest English language print trade show has just finished, and what a different show it was, reports Wayne Robinson.

Print trade shows have been remarkably successful over the past five decades, and Ipex spectacularly so, positioning itself as the international print exhibition, making the most of its Commonwealth ties, and persuading the industry’s solutions developers that spending big at the halfway point between drupas was a great idea.

And while the exhibitors had the cash and the printers had the spending power it all worked very well, deals were done, leads secured, everyone came away happy. Australian printers in particular had a strong affinity with Ipex, with hundreds of them making the trips in years gone by.

However in the cold light of the post-GFC internet-enabled world all bets are off. Many of the traditional major developers are still struggling to realign themselves with an industry that is only two thirds the size it was in 2008, and for press manufacturers that is only a third of the order level, at best, so for many of them their revenue is still way out of whack with their outgoings. Printers meanwhile, well those that have survived, have to a large degree seen banks turn their backs on them, so have no cash to invest.

This new world order was brutally exposed at Ipex 2014, which was a fraction of the size of previous shows. Most of the big names weren’t there, of the top tier only Konica Minolta, Fujifilm, Screen and Xeikon were on the floor, although they were all making hay as for the most part they were without competition. Komori had a B1 H-UV press as the centrepiece of the Eco Zone, while Chinese outfit Hans Gronhi had the only press stand at the show.

There was some innovation, notably from Aussie outfit Impression Technology with a promotional products printer, and from LumeJet, a UK tech business which is printing digitally onto silver halide and getting remarkable quality, but for the most part it was a little upgrade here or there. Have a look at the daily reports on the Australian Printer website for all the technology news.
There were still some 400 exhibitors, although a certain proportion of these were only there because to pull out would have meant losing their deposit, and as that more or less covered their floorspace they decided to stay.

When Heidelberg led the mass withdrawal from Ipex the organisers gamely tried to reposition it as a business development event with an expo running alongside it, and to be fair the non-stop series of seminars and workshops seemed to go down well, and would be a welcome addition at any trade show.

Was Ipex 2014 the final one? Four years is a long time in print these days, so we’ll have to wait and see on that one. However the trend among solutions developers is to take part in vertical shows, such as Fespa or Labelexpo, or run their own events, such as the Canon Poing week, or the Humkeler Innovation Week. Xeikon has got a digital packaging week coming up in May. This latter format provides them with a captive audience for a lower cost than taking a stand at a big expo, and you can expect to see much more of it.

For the broader industry-wide shows there certainly will be a drupa, and the big shows in China, and possibly one in Latin America, but for the likes of Ipex, and Print in Chicago for that matter it could be they have done their dash, although maybe they will reappear as Ipex Digital or similar.

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