“We’re very conscious of the speed of change in the print industry, but clearly it has quite a good future,”
said Dsi CMM Group head of financial sales John Waterlow, chairman of the 2020 committee.

He highlighted that the internet, as opposed to being the prophesied killer of print, has actually proven to be a complementary technology.

Waterlow’s message was echoed by three speakers: William Dutton, director of Oxford Internet Institute, Microsoft UK national technology officer Jerry Fishen­den and Jens Redmer, head of Google’s book search.

Sir Howard Davies, director of London School of Economics, highlighted that the aging populations of developed nations was one our largest threats, but he balanced that against the grow­ing labour unrest and rising wage demands in China.

Speakers from the print industry included William Alden, Alden Group managing director, who shared his experience of setting up plants in Malaysia and India, and Sun Chemical’s John Law and Cynthia Arnold, managing director for digital and chief technology officer respectively, talking about the future of inkjet.

Vision in Print chief executive Richard Gray covered the future management needs of the UK print industry and KBA UK managing director Christian Knapp discussed the past, present and future of the printing industry.

“The print speakers showed a huge amount of passion… and if you have that sort of brainpower and feel­ing going into it, then it isn’t going to die,” said Waterlow.

The event was organised by Stationers’ and Newspaper Makers’ Company to celebrate the 450th anniversary of the Worshipful Company of Stationers being granted a charter by Queen Mary Tudor in 1557.

More than 200 delegates from the print, paper, packaging, publishing and stationery and office products industries attended the conference, held at Stationers’ Hall last Thursday.