Ipex continued to draw in the crowds as it opened its doors to the world’s printing industry for the fifth day running.
Packaging was the focus of the World Print Summit, theatre two, and included a presentation from CS Labels’ managing director, Simon Smith. Mr Smith told the story of how CS Labels was able to increase its turnover year on year since 2008, and it all began with the purchase of a digital press.
The company is now Europe’s largest reel to reel Xeikon press house, and the technology has allowed it to pull away from the pack. Mr Smith said, ‘We used to run entirely with flexo, but found that we couldn’t differentiate ourselves from our competitors and the only way we could compete was on price. This left us no room to grow and that’s why we made the decision to move to digital.’
Looking back at the show so far, Sarah Crumpler, UK marketing manager, Duplo, said, ‘Duplo has had an exceedingly good show, the show is at the right place at the right time, and we’ve done over a million pounds worth of business in the first four days. We extended our commitment to the show in the last few weeks, increasing the size of our stand and taking an additional stand to launch the the UltraBind by Duplo range of PUR binders.’
Another deal was signed at the show as Banbury Litho took on Tharstern’s Primo MIS, which will provide JDF connectivity to its Heidelberg printers. Managing director, Matthew Wise, said, ‘Primo MIS will enable full JDF connectivity to our Heidelberg print systems. It will streamline our administration, integrate into pre-press systems and link directly to the printing process, as well as massively cutting down costs and providing high value job tracking data.’
Konica Minolta was the largest Ipex exhibitor, and the company’s Mark Hinder told Digital Printer: ‘We were right to stay in and show commitment to both Ipex and the print industry, which has resulted in a number of orders for our new press range, our solutions, and a huge amount of interest in the KM1 inkjet press.
‘It has exceeded our expectations. No-one knew what would happen when the doors opened on Monday, but there was a queue outside the door. I fully support Trevor Crawford (head of Ipex organiser Informa’s Print Group) and Ipex and I would like to say thank you to Trevor and his team for doing a great job with the show.’
