DRUPA 2012 has closed its doors with upbeat reports from many of its 1850 exhibitors but a relative dearth of new newspaper equipment business.

‘Thrilled’ was the word used by the new post-reorganisation manroland web systems business, which was one of several reporting substantial heatset web business.  “Our expectations have been met in full,” says board member Peter Kuisle.

DRUPA president Bernhard Schreier, who is chairman of sheetfed press maker Heidelberg, says business was done and “points were set” for the future of the sector.

Exhibition organisers say 314,500 visitors from more than 130 countries came to the show, 75,500 less than in 2008. Werner Matthias Dornscheidt, president of Messe Düsseldorf, isn’t surprised: “In Germany alone the printing industry lost 3900 operations with over 61,000 employees between 2000 and 2011,” he says. “In the USA over the same period more than 7,700 printing operations closed.”

They say the proportion of top managers amongst visitors has grown significantly since 2008 (50.8 per cent compared with 44.4 per cent in 2008).

The 190,000 foreign visitors came from all over the world, with India (15,000) ranking second only to Germany. Following behind these were Belgium, France, the Netherlands, UK, the USA, Switzerland and Italy.

manroland’s Kuisle put the value of its DRUPA orders at about 70 million Euros. “Numerous large customers signed contracts, among them Axel Springer, Kraft-Schlötels, and the Times of India, thus endorsing their further cooperation with us,” he says. “And so the company proved conclusively that it will remain the high-performance business partner for the printing and media industry.”

KBA says it exchanged contracts with customers from 30 countries – many of them for sheetfed and commercial web presses – with China, Russia, Germany, Poland and France heading the list.

The RotaJet 76 inkjet web was also a further focus of keen interest and first contracts are “expected shortly”.

The company says the total value of orders taken was far higher than anticipated, but declined to quote a figure, “given that financing must still be clarified”.

Says president and chief executive Claus Bolza-Schünemann, “We have signed a lot of contracts, both with existing and new customers.”

For digital printing giant HP graphic solutions, worldwide marketing director Francois Martin says DRUPA was “an incredible show” with the inkjet web press, “very successful”.

“We came with transformative innovations and customers responded very positively enabling us to exceed our sales target for the show very early on,” he says.

Kodak’s chairman Antonio Perez also described the show as “extraordinary on many fronts”.

“I am very excited about how our customers are embracing change and adding new solutions to create higher value pages for their clients,” he says.

Landa Corporation’s Benny Landa “imagined we would have a big impact”, but was overwhelmed by how customers responded to its message, technology and partnering strategy.

“We have received unprecedented levels of interest and orders (letters of Intent with deposit) for our family of sheetfed and web presses,” he says.

The next DRUPA will be held from June 2-5, 2016.