I arrived in Dusseldorf, Germany on an early flight from Prague in the Czech Republic where I had a fantastic week’s holiday visiting ancient ruins and drinking excellent Czech beer.

As soon as you land in Dusseldorf it is clear that the city is all about Drupa. The airport is littered with Drupa ads and Drupa information booths. Promotional girls hand out pamphlets & promotions as you queue for a taxi, and huge Drupa flags line the streets as you enter the city.

The city is full to bursting with printing industry personnel from every corner of the globe. Waiting at the underground to catch the U78 to the ‘Messe-Nord’ (the exhibition-centre has its own dedicated train-station); I can hear snippets of conversations in German, French, Japanese and recognise accents from England, New Zealand and different parts of the USA.

Four years ago I came to Drupa for the first time and was completely overwhelmed by the enormity of the show. Not surprising when you consider that there are over 1800 exhibitors and 1.83million square metres (40 soccer-fields) of exhibition space.

Today my only goal is to get my bearings, learn my way around the 17 exhibition halls and simply enjoy the spectacle.

In the very first hall I entered, I was confronted by one of the most spectacular stands at Drupa – the Kodak Stand. At its centre is a huge illuminated banner showing colour ads and slogans promoting Kodak’s products. It looks almost like a space-ship. Their stand contains products ranging from CTP to prepress and particularly Digital and Web-to-print.

Next was the Heidelberg stand. Heidelberg have two halls (1 & 2 of course) booked completely and solely for their equipment and software. They have installed presses of every size and configuration from SM52’s up to a large format press. They have huge areas dedicated to cutting, folding, stitching and prepress. The walls are designed with clever banners that welcome you on the way in and wish you well on your way out. A computer voice greets guests in half a dozen different languages as they walk through the door.

The KBA stand had not only their full fleet of sheet-fed presses but also their digital and web presses too.

There is also a hall dedicated to new-technology and software innovation called Drupa-Innovation-Parc. In this hall alone there are over 100 new and innovative products targeted at workflow and integration…I will be spending some time there over the course of the next week.

I walked the halls for around 6 hours just looking, gawping like a tourist at all conceivable print-related machinery and material. Over the next week I will be meeting with all of our current suppliers and their competitors, looking at all of their latest innovations and will publish a daily report on our website. If anyone has any questions, comments or has something they would like me to investigate while I am over here, they can email me.

Auf Wiedersehen,

Bill