Drupa. It’s undoubtedly the greatest print show on earth, and this year’s event looks to have no shortage of attractions for those interested in the business of putting ink, toner – or indeed something else altogether – on paper or other substrates.

The exhibition is shaping up to include an ideal blend of products that are real, working and can deliver profits for the people that purchase them; alongside some suitably thought-provoking ‘technology demonstrations’ pointing to where cutting-edge print technology is heading. The latter will provide savvy print bosses with plenty of possibilities to consider for the future.

And when it comes to showmanship Drupa 2012 will mark the return of one of the industry’s great innovators and impresarios, as Indigo founder Benny Landa returns to the industry with his new nanotechnology printing venture, Landa Digital Printing. It’s a safe bet that Landa and his team will be putting on something of a spectacle in Hall 9.

Details of precisely what the Landa Digital Printing offering will be are under wraps for the time being, and the [unofficial] word on the street is that commercial availability could be some way off. But with Landa back in town with his legendary pizzazz and a new print proposition, it will certainly heighten interest in digital printing developments, should any heightening of interest be needed.

Looking at the floorplan for Drupa, it’s incredible to see how much space is now devoted to digital technology. At the last Drupa in 2008, it was across four halls, now it’s up to six. HP is the second-biggest exhibitor behind Heidelberg, with one HP executive quipping that they would have taken extra space if they’d realised how close they were to gaining the number one spot.

Consider this: HP will have a whopping 50 digital presses running on its stand. And yes, among them will be the firm’s new B2-format Indigo. That is going to be some display of digital printing firepower. Francois Martin, marketing director at the firm’s graphic solutions business, believes the entire printing and publishing industry is at "an important moment of change".

"A new world is now shaping, and that world is digital. Digital production is no longer for small runs and special jobs. It’s becoming mainstream," he asserts. "This is the second digital revolution. The first was at Ipex 1993. The second is now, when everyone is announcing digital developments – even offset players."

Martin makes an important point and there is a huge buzz around the plethora of digital printing advances, especially in inkjet where there seems virtually no limit to the potential applications for the technology. But while the heavy-metal press manufacturers are being squeezed, they are not sleeping while digital gains ever-greater market share.

Shared expertise

Heidelberg, the world’s largest press manufacturer, has made a well-publicised return to digital over the past year through its tie-up with Ricoh, and the worldwide roll-out of this offering is now almost complete.

Industry partnerships of this nature are becoming as abundant as foaming steins in Düsseldorf’s Altstadt. Komori recently announced a similar tie-up with Konica Minolta that will involve both inkjet and electrophotographic devices. And Canon-owned Océ has a partnership with Manroland, although the future shape of this co-operation will depend on the strategic direction taken by the now-separate Manroland sheetfed and web offset businesses under their new owners.

Venerable British book printing specialist Timsons has developed a digital book production line that melds its specialist paper handling system with Kodak’s Stream inkjet heads. And elsewhere, KBA has teamed with print goliath RR Donnelley on the development of an inkjet web press that fuses RRD’s inkjet technology with KBA’s web press manufacturing expertise. The results will be among the world premieres in Düsseldorf, and add a new dimension to the high-speed inkjet printing arena, a sector where Screen currently claims market leadership with more than 400 Truepress Jet520 systems installed.

This area has been identified as a huge growth area by industry analyst InfoTrends. Of the overall growth forecast for digital colour production print between 2010-2015, inkjet is predicted to increase six-fold to some 213bn pages. Look out for new systems from HP, Kodak and Océ.

Another increasingly mainstream area is web-to-print, and a lively ongoing debate can be expected at Drupa around the break-even points and economies of differing print output options, as evidenced by the activity in web-to-print and ganging up of jobs on highly automated and efficient offset presses.

KBA UK managing director Christian Knapp says that large-format offset presses will become more productive as innovations applied first on smaller formats evolve upwards. "These large-format presses will now behave like B1 presses in terms of their speed, of set-up and job versatility," he says.

And despite the digital assertions of HP’s Martin, at Heidelberg, the argument is not about an either or choice between conventional printing and digital, it’s about marrying available technologies and creating slick workflows to allow customers to divert jobs to the best output option.

"The combination of digital and offset, and also digital and flexo, will play a key role in the future," says Heidelberg chairman and chief executive Bernhard Schreier, who describes Drupa 2012 as "the Drupa of integrated technologies".