Sabine Geldermann: Pre-show Insight

Introduce yourself and tell us about how you came to be in the industry and in your role now…

I am the director of drupa within the portfolio print technologies. I joined Messe Düsseldorf in 2013 however before that I started my professional career with British trade fair organisers after university with Blenheim International and REED exhibitions being the biggest worldwide trade fair and conference organisers.

At the end of the day, the trade fair business is to a certain extent in my DNA and I am passionate about the whole diverse approach when it comes to marketing, PR, and sales. It’s a great pleasure and honour being in charge of drupa, a world-leading trade fair, and trying to maintain the USP and the relevance on a global scale, and it’s working quite well.

Drupa is the world’s largest show for the printing industry and has been around for over 70 years, can you tell us about its history?

Absolutely. Drupa was founded in 1951 so we’re talking about a long tradition that started in Dusseldorf at that time with a strong focus on commercial print. That’s still in our DNA but as we all have seen, the industry has evolved and continuously conquered new areas of application. The ongoing digitalisation has certainly led to the fact that exhibitors and suppliers are continuously developing their portfolios and drupa is reflecting the global development intensively when it comes to new areas next to commercial print.

From fiber, plastics, wood, textiles, aluminium, you name it, the industry is continuously showcasing new solutions. Something that we’ve observed coming from the commercial print side is that a lot of our exhibitors are evolving their portfolios into packaging production.

Here again, we’re talking about not only folding carton, but corrugated driven by e-commerce, flexible packaging, and labels, and by that you have the direct synergy with Food, Non-Food, Pharma, and Cosmetics, so it’s a huge universe and there are a lot of opportunities to go for and we are very much looking forward to seeing very inspirational products at drupa.

What size did the show start out at so we can get an idea of the scale of growth over the years?

Drupa started out at the major fairground which no longer exists in downtown Düsseldorf. It then moved to the new fairground and has been there for over 40 years. We certainly started with the first event on a much smaller scale but now we’re talking about roughly 140,000sq m net, so as you can imagine it’s a huge development.

We have 1,600 exhibitors roughly representing 55 nations so the industry has evolved continuously. Drupa was founded by an association in Germany and their European or German-based members like Heidelberger Druckmaschinen, Koenig & Bauer, Manroland, and so many more. It very quickly became a global place to be.

From the very start, Japanese exhibitors have had a very strong presence with companies like Komori being there for such a long time. We’re talking about 73 years of existence of drupa with four-year cycles and even twice five-year cycles. It’s a long history that we’re covering and a brand that is still enjoying a huge reputation on a global scale.

It’s no mean feat to organise something of this size and there’s been an eight-year in-person hiatus due to Covid. Can you tell us what you’ve been doing during this gap?

Yes, with pleasure. At this time in 2020, the show was completely sold and we had intensive contact points with the whole global community.

In 2021 we organised a virtual drupa that reflected the conference programme that had been prepared until we had to cancel. It would have been a shame to no longer showcase that and our absolute target has been to get touchpoints with the global community. This is why we invested heavily in a four-day purely virtual event and it was great to see KPIs in terms of reach and participation and valuable content that we shared with our worldwide community.

To close the gap between cycles we continued after 2021 to launch drupa in 2022 and maintained continuously strong contact points with the industry. On a yearly basis, we launch trend reports, have a strong digital portal, update the drupa blog, publish newsletters, and reconnect via our international portfolio with our global community in order to make sure that drupa is always on the agenda of our community.

Content-driven facts are relevant for the industry so drupa is not only a provider and platform for a trade fair, but we also have the target and desire to meet the needs of our customers when it comes to highly valuable knowledge transfer and that is what we are doing on a daily, monthly, and yearly basis in order to maintain contact points and this has paid off very well.

A lot has changed over the past eight years and two of the megatrends you are focusing on this year are Sustainability and Digitalisation. Can you tell us about how these trends will be reflected at the event?

I think digitalisation will play a major role at many of our exhibitor booths when it comes to, for example, self-learning machinery, automation, maintenance, more efficient workflows, IT solutions, big data, and
how you can analyse big data. Again it comes back to AI and robotics, the ‘Smart Factory’, and the next level of Industry 4.0.

Drupa 2016 and 2020 already reflected the ongoing digitalisation and automation development and this year, there will be the next generation of that development highlighted.

With sustainability, we all know from daily media reports how important it is and it’s not just a theme and topic in very mature markets that will gain more relevance.

One side of the story is driven by legal regulation. Being in the EU, you have to follow ESGs and for every company up to a certain size, it’s all about reporting, transparency, and controlling your supply chain in many ways. It’s no longer an option, it will become an obligation and it already is today to a certain extent.

At drupa we will have dedicated special forums that will educate and engage our worldwide attendees to ensure they maintain their competitive advantage and understand where the industry is developing and ensure they are prepared.

In terms of in-show features, there will be three Touchpoint Forums, Sustainability, Textile, and Packaging. How did you decide to divide the areas into these three themes?

These touchpoints had already been planned for 2020 and the dedicated forums simply focus on the potential of the future. As we have seen from the shift in portfolios of our exhibitors, packaging production will certainly be more perceived on the fairground. This is why we decided in 2016, in 2020, and now to continue with that highly relevant forum for visionary, innovative, and smart packaging design solutions.

The fact that we launched Touchpoint Sustainability simply reflects the relevance of a circular economy. We wanted to make sure that we’re driving that topic with participating associations. The organiser of that forum is a Germany-based but Europe-wide association to educate and provide insights into where sustainability is going to become relevant and to showcase best cases from 30 partners that are involved.

For Textile, we will be focusing on and reflecting growth potential. Digital print technologies and inkjet will allow people to print on more applications like furniture, apparel, fashion, interior décor, and in other verticals like the automotive industry.

On a yearly basis we launch trend reports that clearly reflect trends in the industry and we wanted to cover these trends and highlight these in special forums.

Can you tell us about drupa Next Age (DNA) and why it’s so important to champion younger talent in the industry?

One target that has clearly been put on our agenda from our participating companies and associations has been to activate young talent and to recruit potential from youngsters in order to make sure that they are getting engaged with the print and packaging industry.

I think to a certain extent, everybody is fighting for young and fresh talent and it’s why we, through DNA, are focusing on best cases from universities and have different associations and universities participating from Germany but also across the globe. The beauty is that we are engaging with students and apprenticeships from different areas and they all get a stage to share their solutions and ideas about the future.

Next to students and young talents, we are also focusing on start-up companies because very often startups need direct contact and financial support from more established companies. It’s a place focusing on cutting-edge technologies from robotics and AI to new materials and will feature short, technical presentations, creating the network and showcasing the creativity of the industry.

What advice would you give to people planning their trip and wanting to get the most out of the show?
11 days sounds like a very long period of time but at the end of the day we are talking about a huge number of exhibitors in different areas. There are 20 exhibitors with several thousand square metres of booths and they have their own stages and theatres. Next to these brilliant performances from our exhibitors, we are adding another five forums which shows the landscape and the environment.

So, the best way to make your visit the most effective and to take the best value out of it is to get best prepared. We are occupying 18 halls so make sure you already know where to go, plan or mark the exhibitors of your choice in the relevant hall, and also try to make appointments prior to the event.
We even offer guided tours for our worldwide associates and you can simply select a theme and get guided tours around our trade fair. Also, have a look at our conference database and you can select by forum, company, speaker, and topic, and it will automatically present you with your ideal list of talks.

It’s been eight years since the last drupa took place in person, what are you most excited about the show?

I am very excited about the show and to meet our customers face to face again and certainly see the groundbreaking technologies. Drupa has always stood for product premieres and groundbreaking new trends and applications.

Needless to mention networking is important as well as the human factor.

We are in an industry that is truly technologically driven but on the other side, we are a very emotional community and I think people are very much looking forward to meeting face to face after such a long time.

Seeing all the delegates that have confirmed their participation from every single continent will certainly be, for me personally, a very nice opportunity to meet again with familiar faces as well as with a lot of new faces. This will motivate me a lot and my team and all of our reps around the world. It’s a huge universe and there are a lot of opportunities to go for and we are very much looking forward to seeing very inspirational products at drupa.

You can see the full schedule for in-show features and find the the full exhibitor list on www.drupa.com