“The whole feel around Ipex is that it’s in effect a launch event, it’s a new venue and we’ve completely restructured the entire event, and its nothing like it has been in the past,” said event director Trevor Crawford.

He highlighted the 130 speaker sessions and 230 individual speakers, many of them leading printers from across the globe, that will collectively deliver more than 80 hours of “inspirational content” across the show’s six theatres.

Crawford said that the whole Informa team, along with its partners, had worked hard to ensure that as well as benefitting from the technical innovation on the show floor from the around 400 exhibitors, visitors have the opportunity to walk away from the show with a raft of ideas to take back to their business.

“I really think that with the educational content and features like the Eco Zone, Inspiration Avenue, Make Ready Challenge, Future Innovations and the Wide Format Zone at this year’s show will have a more meaningful and engaging impact on visitors than any Ipex that has come before,” he added.

This was echoed by St Ives chief executive and Ipex president Patrick Martell: “The industry is changing so much, and managing that change can be incredibly challenging, in terms of figuring out what to do and how to do it. The show will offer people the opportunity to hear from people who are embracing the challenges and hopefully give them the confidence to rise to those challenges themselves,”

While Crawford wouldn’t be drawn on pre-registered visitor numbers, he said that he was “comfortable” with the volume and that the geographic split mirrored previous shows, with 43% of pre-registered visitors coming from overseas.

“We have to treat the show as a new launch, with a very different strategy, but one hopefully in line with what people want. As it stands today though, it’s a tough call to predict footfall, but all of the pre-reg and anecdotal evidence is encouraging,” he added.

Martell added that in some respects the challenges the show had faced had made Ipex much stronger: “It’s going to be inspirational and educational. And while at its heart it is and always will be a show about print, it’s no longer just a show for printers.”

While Crawford acknowledged that a number of leading manufacturers won’t be at the show this time around, although many, like Canon and Xerox, will have kit on reseller stands, he said he hoped this year’s event would encourage some of the no shows to re-engage in 2018.

“More importantly though our priority is to make sure that the exhibitors that have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with us have a great Ipex 2014, we’ve worked really hard for them and the visitors and those two groups will be our focus over the next six days,” said Crawford.