The word is out. Ipex 2010 is on its way to becoming one of the most important exhibition for print.

The exhibition will be held from 18 to 25 May 2010 across 10 halls at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, UK.

Interestingly, Ipex has kept in view the demographic potential of the print market in India. 20 May is the international day for India at the show. The focus will be about the trends in the Indian market, the needs of an Indian printer and business opportunities in the western market. Already, there are over 700 pre-registrations for the show from Indian visitors.

The number of exhibitors is 580 at the the time of going to press and IIR Exhibitors, the Ipex organisers are expecting more exhibitors from across the globe to join forces.

Event director for Ipex 2010, Trevor Crawford said: "A show of this magnitude with the number and type of exhibitors, is significant. It focuses on helping the industry at large and printers in general to drive greater efficiency and effectiveness  throughout their organisations."
Nick Craig Waller, managing director for Ipex 2010 added: "I would like to see a lot of participation from the Indian print fraternity, taking advantage of some key developments that are poised to bring changes to the industry." At the moment, there are approximately 20 Indian exhibitors at the show.

Digital to rule at Ipex 2010
A major show after the Drupa in 2008, Ipex 2010 will continue from where Drupa had left off. Drupa initiated the shift to digital and Ipex will witness the full integration of digital into the print industry.

Consider the statistics. 38% digital, 36% post-press and 26% press in comparison to 26% digital, 33% post-press and 41% press in Ipex 2006. Among the top ten exhibitors, HP has the biggest stall followed by Heidelberg, Xerox, Canon, Fuji, Kodak, Friedheim, Ricoh, Konica Minolta and Oce.

This year, the largest stand area will be occupied by HP, with 3,000 sqmtrs. With 2,488 sqmtrs, Heidelberg has the second largest stand area while Xerox with 1,980 is the third largest. There is also Canon and Fuji, both with big stands. Among the new exhibitors, the largest stand belongs to Ricoh with a 1,432 sqmtrs. Konica Minolta, has increased the size of its stand by 395% to hold 1,086 sqmtrs. The IIR Exhibitions has been successful in filling the exhibition area with commitments for 57,000 sqmtrs till this time.

Wide format companies already confirmed on the floor plan include Agfa, Canon, Durst, EFI, Epson, Fotoba, Fujifilm, HP, Kodak, Mimaki Engineering,  Oce, Roland, Screen, Vivid Laminating and Xerox.

With more than 150 million digital pages production per month in India and growing at a rate of 25.8% every three years, event director Trevor Crawford feels that Ipex will have new technologies and digital production printing facilities to offer to the Indian digital printer.
The digital growth trend is also indicated by the increase from 40% to 80% of digital floor plan from 2006 to 2010.

Digital print is set to dominate this year's Ipex show, with most of the players doubling the space for their stands.  Crawford says: "The positivity in the market is better than it was six months ago and there's a new air of controlled optimism."

Other trends
Post-press is another area where there is an increase over the previous Ipex. Interestingly, the space for conventional press has dropped considerable from 41% in 2006 to 26% this year.
Volume jobs for book printing, new publications, pharmaceuticals printing, rise of export and growth in packaging sector has led to post-press coming in-house for the printer in India. At Ipex, the post-press, finishing and converting is represented with the likes of Horizon, Pitney Bowes, Duplo, Ferag, Bohrs , Muller  Martini, Kern and more.

Furthermore, the presence of Chinese manufacturers will be the biggest ever. More than 60 stands will be occupied by the Chinese exhibitors, making it a major area of growth for Ipex 2010. This number is expected to rise to 100 by the time the show commences. Ipex will be a good platform for the rapidly increasing trend of investments, acquisitions and innovations coming from the Chinese print community.

Another interesting trend is, vendors have shifted their focus on helping their clients and prospects that enhance their business opportunities with sales, marketing and productivity training.

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SHOW STOPPERS AT IPEX

Fujifilm will commercially launch its Jet Press 720 B2 sheetfed inkjet machine at Ipex. Although capable of handling variable data work, Fuji is initially positioning the 2,700 sheets per hour press for short-run commercial print work. 

Xerox will showcase enhancements to the Xerox 650/1300 continuous feed printing systems, toner-based monochrome devices along with the XMPie software.

Oce will launch Arizona 550 GT UV flatbed printer. It is capable of POP-quality prints at 40 sqmtrs per hour and uses UV curable inks and Oce VariaDot imaging technology and can print on a wide variety of rigid substrates from to 1.25 by 2.5 mtrs. Oce will also launch JetStream 1000, VarioPrint 6320 Ultra and ColorWave 600.

Ricoh will showcase its Pro C720 and C720S production printers as well as NowPrint, its own branded web-to-print and business development tools.

Domino Printing Sciences is launching an array of suppliers of inkjet label printers N600 and K600. The N600, due to be available from Ipex, is a continuous feed colour inkjet label printer. The printer uses UV inks and is firmly targeted at label applications.

Epson has revealed that it will launch its maiden digital label press at the forthcoming Ipex tradeshow. It can print onto a range of substrates that include semi-gloss, film and matte label stock in thicknesses up to 320 microns.

Pitney Bowes will launch new product line of high speed continuous feed inkjet colour printers. The Intellijet Printing System is the fruit of the strategic alliance with HP, in which Pitney Bowes has the exclusivity of the T300 inkjet web press for transactional and direct mail markets. In addition, Pitney Bowes features its own DFE capable of processing data streams.

Competing with Jet Press 720 in the B2 inkjet segment will be Screen’s launch of Truepress JetSX. Screen claims that Truepress JetSX is the world’s first full-colour B2 sheetfed inkjet press. It has the ability to output to B2-width on a variety of media types, making it ideal for high-level hybrid printing systems, overprinting variable data on offset-produced material. It can output at 1,440 x 720 dpi to produce text and images of a quality to rival offset.