Well the waiting is almost over and drupa is just about to start. Tomorrow, Wednesday May 28 is the pre-opening day at which the different press conferences start. It used to be a slow start for the press with just Heidelberg having their press conference to start drupa. Now the first press conference is at 9.15 am for Konica Minolta and then the first of the big iron companies, MAN Roland has their event at 10.30 am. Then on the opening day of drupa, May 29, it is a press conference almost every half hour.

One of the events that’s being really looked forward to is the Xerox press event at 3.00 pm German time (9.00 am East Coast USA) when Xerox will finally pull the covers of their new announcements. Xerox has been very quiet about what it will be showing unlike most of the other vendors. We have heard a lot from HP Indigo with its new 7000 Digital Press and from HP inkjet operations with its Inkjet Web Press, Xeikon has announced its new 8000 press, Kodak has announced a new drop-on-demand inkjet Versamark, the VL2000, as well as its future STREAM Concept Press, and there have been a raft of high-speed inkjet announcements from all sorts of companies. So far Xerox has announced its 490/980 Continuous Feed Color System and the 1300 monochrome system, but nothing else. When Anne Mulcahy steps up to the podium at 3.00 pm Thursday there will be a great feeling of expectation.

In the past few days there has been one really interesting announcement from one of Xerox’s partners Fujifilm. This is a new 28 inch wide (B2 format) sheet fed inkjet press that is actually being made by Fuji Xerox sing inkjet print heads from the Fujifilm subsidiary Dimatix. The question this raises is how will this be sold and through which channels. Already a number of Fujifilm channels sell Xerox presses such as Fujifilm Graphic System in North America and Fujifilm UK. Will they now be selling the new inkjet press alongside the Xerox iGen3 and Docucolor presses?

The big buzz at drupa up to now concerned the range of high-speed continuous feed color presses. The questions raised by these are what are the markets for these presses and are there going to be buyers ready to take them. The new trend of transpromo printing is relatively new and one has difficulty finding too many companies already operating in this space. I am sure there will be great interest in these presses at drupa but will there also be buyers ready to purchase them?

I will be there tomorrow morning before 9.00 am having the first of a huge number of coffees and perhaps even a few beers over the next fourteen days. I really look forward to drupa and the opportunity to network with so many people. I also look forward to the hospitality of Messe Düsseldorf where their support for the press is second to none. I will be seeing an awful lot of equipment but also be speaking at various events. If you are at drupa I hope to see you.

Andy Tribute tribute@attributes.co.uk
Managing Partner, Attributes Associates