A quick shout-out for some of the UK manufacturers showing their wares at drupa, and by all accounts doing us Brits proud.

Timsons is over-the-moon at the extremely positive reaction to its T-Press inkjet book production system, which really does look like a winner for book printers looking to add digital capabilities for industrial-scale production.  Shall be mighty interested to see which book printer follows St Ives Clays in buying the next one.

Yesterday I met with Roger Preston at Foiltone, who has developed a clever retrofit device for cold foiling and cast and cure hologram application. Worldwide sales, particularly among packaging printers, are growing strongly. Yet it seems UK printers are largely uninterested, which is a bit odd.

Also yesterday, I caught up with the chaps at Tech-ni-Fold who have come up with yet more nifty finishing devices. The hand operated CreaseStream Mini will surely sell like, well, hot sausages at the Messe - this delightfully simple bit of kit is surely a must for anyone producing mock-ups.

I also like the Auto version of the CreaseStream, targeted at that 'graveyard' of old folders that are hanging around in printshops, and can be made to do something much more useful.

Watkiss has produced one of those 'brilliant but simple' devices with the additional two-knife trimmer for its PowerSquare square back book making system.

Morgana is also riding the digital wave with its DigiBook system, and has notched up its most successful year ever for exports.

FFEI is keeping up its reputation for innovation with new software tools and the inkjet label press jointly-developed with Nilpeter.

Alphasonics is doing clever things with ultrasonic cleaning technology. 

I haven't seen all the UK manufacturers yet, in fact I'll be catching up with Domino tomorrow all being well. Have had a sneaky peek at the firm's N600i inkjet label press and it's looking very good.

And amid all the new-tech, how about this from Caslon? At the last count they'd sold at least one Adana letterpress press for every day of the show. Love it.