#fespa

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FESPA awards 2025 open for entries

FESPA’s long-standing Awards programme returns in preparation to recognise industry leaders at the co-located FESPA Global Print Expo, European Sign Expo and Personalisation Experience in Berlin, taking place in May 2025. The competition is now open for submissions from speciality print providers and sign-makers to showcase their most outstanding projects. This global awards programme encourages innovation and excellence, providing a platform for print and sign-makers to highlight their latest and most significant achievements, forging a path to set new standards for the industry.

FESPA’s Head of Association and Technical Lead and one of the 2025 Awards judges, Graeme Richardson-Locke, comments: “Speaking on behalf of the judges, we all hope to be surprised by new levels of technical excellence and clear evidence that the entry has been created with the greatest care, reflecting the professional standards that we've seen over many years. For entries this year, we’re interested in seeing the use of appropriate and sustainable materials, reflecting the wider industry’s goal of reducing its environmental impact.”

The FESPA Awards will welcome entries to the following categories:

Display and POP on Paper and Board

Packaging on Paper and Board

Display and POP on Plastic

Packaging on Plastics

Posters

Serigraphies and Fine Art

Decals and Printed Labels

Wrapping

Creative Special Effects – Paper Board and Plastics

Special Effects on T-shirts, Garments and Other Textiles

Printed Garments

Roll-to-Roll Printed Textiles

Glass, Ceramic, Metal and Wood Products

Direct Printing on Three Dimensional Products

Non-Printed Signage

Functional Printing – Fascias, Dials, Nameplates

Printeriors

The final category, the Young Star Award, is open to individuals aged 16-25 who are vocational trainees or students in digital or screen printing and design. To enter, applicants can submit their work in any print-related category.

Regarding the Young Star Award, Richardson-Locke states: “We are always thrilled to review the entries for the Young Star category and impressed by the standard of work submitted. We see creative thinking and technical delivery to a standard which demonstrates that we have new talent coming up within the industry, a topic which is really important to FESPA and its associations. It's hard having to choose but for the winner, the accolade marks a significant achievement. We hold them to a high standard and don't make it easy to win!”

The People’s Choice Award will be open to voting from 6 January 2025, with the FESPA online community casting their votes across all categories. In contrast, the Best in Show Award and the Judges’ Award for Innovation are chosen by the panel of judges from FESPA, setting them apart as unique recognitions of excellence in the industry.

Printers and sign-makers have until Wednesday 12 December 2024 to submit their entries for the 2025 FESPA Awards. The shortlisted entries will be announced on 23 February 2025 and showcased from 6-9 May 2025 at Messe Berlin, Germany.

Entry fees are €100 for members and €150 for non-members, with early bird discounts available until 29 August 2024.

For more information on the FESPA Awards 2025 and how to participate visit: www.fespaawards.com

[ippnoida]

Fespa part 2 – A maturing market

One of the main takeaways for me from this year’s Fespa show was just how much the market for large format sign and display hardware has matured. This meant that there was little in the way of real innovation in terms of new printers. That said, there were a couple of new machines worth noting, which I will deal with in this story.

I’ve already written in the first part of this story that many Chinese manufacturers showed off their equipment and that many of the more established vendors from first-world countries already work with Chinese partners to build their machines. Alongside this, one of the other things that struck me was that vendors are now just rounding out their portfolios, often with relatively minor upgrades, or rebadging kit from competitors to plug gaps in their own line-up.

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EFI had a number of new models on its stand, mostly upgraded versions of existing machines. Thus there was a new 3.2-meter wide Pro 33r roll-to-roll LED printer, which is based on the existing Pro 32r+. EFI says that this will deliver up to a 35% speed increase in POP mode, as well as better image quality, thanks to switching to the new 5pL Ricoh Gen6 printheads. It has an integrated mesh kit for printing on porous substrates, a wrinkle analyzer to help avoid printhead strikes, built-in backlit proofing lights, and a built-in Fiery digital front end. It can produce up to 260 sqm per hour.

EFI also showed a new 3.3m wide Q3h hybrid, which is a rebadged version of Agfa’s Tauro and will be sold with the original Agfa inks and Asanti RIP. This is available in two variants, as the X and the slightly more productive XP. There’s a choice of four colors with CMYK or six with the additional light colours as well as optional white and clear inks. It can produce up to 96 boards per hour, equivalent to 905 sqm per hour.

EFI has also upgraded its Vutek H-series hybrid printers with a new H+ specification for both the H3+ and H5+ machines, which is said to offer greater refinements though this was not shown at Fespa. There’s a lot more to say about EF, particularly around the Nozomi platform, I but I don’t think that we can get a fully rounded picture of EFI until Drupa so this part of the story is a work in progress.

That’s not the case with Agfa, which is not going to be at drupa and instead put all of its efforts into Fespa, unveiling three new printers, including the Bronco, which is a 3.3m wide hybrid printer.

Essentially, Agfa has adapted the print engine from its existing Jeti Mira flatbed, which is just 2.7m wide. Thus it uses Ricoh Gen5 printheads with a native 7pL drop size. The final configuration will have 12 heads for the CMYKlclm colors plus another four for the white ink. The heads are arranged in four rows, which should deliver up to 248 sqm per hour. However, for now it only runs the basic configuration of two rows of heads, which has a maximum speed of 100 sqm per hour. Customers will be able to upgrade to the full set of heads when they are available.

In addition, Agfa showed the H3200, a 3.2m wide hybrid that was announced earlier this year but was shown for the first time in Amsterdam. This has now been renamed the Cuervo H3200, in keeping with Agfa’s new theme of using animal names for its printers.

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Inktec has introduced a new UV LED flatbed, the Jetrix LXa5 that’s aimed at entry level users. It has a bed size of 2.5 x 1.3 m. This uses Konica Minolta KM1024a printheads, which is a slightly unusual approach as these are analog heads but Todd Kim of Inktec says: “We think the analog head has better print quality, even compared with the Ricoh Gen5.”

The head has been set up to deliver a binary 6pL drop size, rather than the more usual approach of jetting multiple drop sizes. It offers a maximum resolution of 1440 x 726 dpi.

There are six ink channels with a fairly flexible choice of configurations. This includes CMYK plus either light cyan and light magenta, or two whites or a combination of one white, primer, and clear ink. There’s recirculation for the white ink channels from the main ink tank to the sub-tank but not at the head itself.

It can produce up to 37 sqm per hour in four-pass mode, though this drops to 19 sqm per hour in its higher quality 8-pass mode. It has an anti-crash system to protect print heads. It will take media up to 100 mm thick and pneumatic pin registration for quickly placing media on the table. The LXa5 is available now.

Vanguard Europe, which is a subsidiary of Durst, used the European Fespa show to introduce the VKR3200-HS, which was described as a new 3.2 m wide roll-to-roll large format printer. That’s a bit misleading since Vanguard has been offering exactly the same printer in its main US markets long before Durst acquired the company. So the only new part is that it’s now being manufactured in Europe for the European market. Otherwise, the VKR3200-HS is a 3.2m wide machine fitted with Kyocera KJ4A printheads with a choice of four or eight heads, and able to print CMYK plus light cyan and light magenta as well as white.

Vanguard Europe is essentially a copy of the main Vanguard operation in the US. Thus it manufactures its printers that are destined for the European market at its base in Brixen next to Durst on the Italian side of the Tyrol region. This sort of distributed work demonstrates an environmental-friendly approach to manufacturing as it cuts out a lot of the carbon footprint and therefore waste associated with shipping printers all over the world from a central production hub.

There were also a number of Direct-to-object printers on show. These are mostly flatbeds that can be adjusted to accommodate objects of different heights. Roland DG, for example, introduced a new VersaObject CO-i series of flatbeds for printing to objects up to 242 mm in height and 100 kg/m2 in weight. They are said to be able to print to slightly curved objects such as footballs. There are five models in all, with sizes ranging from 762 mm to 1625 mm wide. Print resolution is up to 1440 dpi, with LED UV curing. There are eight ink channels, with a choice of CMYK plus red and orange with either white, gloss or primer.

Roland also showed off a new small flatbed from its VersaStudio range, the BD-8, which can take objects up to 240 x 1787 mm and 102 mm in height. It can be fitted with an optional rotary axis so as to print onto cylindrical objects. It uses UV LED inks and prints CMYK plus white and a primer which allows it to handle a variety of materials such as glass and metal as well as fabrics, plastics, and wood.

Epson showed off two small devices with A4-sized platens. This included the SureColor V1000, a small UV flatbed printer that’s suitable for producing small items such as fridge magnets or decorating objects like golf balls. It will take objects up to 70 mm high and print to various materials including polycarbonates, aluminum, wood and stone. It’s been designed to fit flush against a wall, with the lid hinged to still allow it to open fully, and a smart squared-off glass casing.

This was matched by the almost identical-looking SureColor F1000, which is Epson’s smallest DtG printer, and which I will cover in the follow-up to this story. The entire stand was pitched as a micro-retail environment, with a countertop fitted around a P65000 photo printer and two small printers at either end. It’s an interesting idea and not hard to see a cafe offering to print souvenirs while customers drink their coffees.

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Another trend that struck me was the sheer number of cutting tables being shown off. It’s not so long ago when this segment would have been limited mainly to Zund and Kongsberg at Fespa. But there are a lot of different players now. Some are established European companies, such as Elitron and Bullmer, but there are also a lot of new Chinese manufacturers, including iEcho and JWEI, who are becoming quite prevalent in the marketplace now.

There is some evidence of a trend toward larger tables, as well as a very noticeable growth in the automation around these tables. This is only to be expected given that both of these trends match similar patterns with large format printers. I expect that this is something that we will see more of at drupa, where there will be more space and time to justify setting up the larger automated cutting tables.

The third part of this story covers the other side of Fespa and the various textile printing solutions that were shown in Amsterdam.

[acrylicmirror-goodsense]

🏗️Exciting times at Fespa! Warmly welcome to join us🌟 -Date: Mar.19th-22nd, 2024 -Booth No.: Hall 5-E77

[kangocorp]

FESPA Global Print Expo returns to Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and it’s a great opportunity for you to network with professionals within the industry, build opportunities and examine the latest software, machinery and applications used to help enhance your business offerings. In Amsterdam you’ ll have a great opportunity for you to network with professionals within the industry, build…

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Expo Stand Services is a top-class exhibition stand builder serving a range of showcasing services to exhibitors worldwide. You can learn more about us and our offerings at https://www.expostandservice.com/fespa-global-print-expo/

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FESPA Exhibition Preview! Stay tuned!

[triumfointernational-blog]

FESPA GLOBAL PRINT EXPO

23 May – 26 May, 2023

MUNICH, GERMANY

[robertbakerde]

The FESPA Global Print Expo is the world's leading exhibition for the specialty print industry. It will be held in Amsterdam from 14-17 May 2024. The event will feature over 700 exhibitors showcasing the latest innovations in print technology, products, and services. Visitors will also have the opportunity to attend a variety of educational seminars and workshops.

[carlnewton01]

FESPA is the leading Global Print Expo taking place from 23 to 26 May 2023 in Munich. Connect with our Experts now at https://sensationsworldwide.com/fespa-global-print-expo/

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Dates announced: FESPA Middle East 2025

FESPA has announced that the second edition of FESPA Middle East will return to the Dubai Exhibition Centre in 2025. The event will run for three days from 20 – 22 January 2025, occupying the North Halls of the venue, including halls 1A, 1B & 2A.

FESPA’s decision to host this event in 2025 follows the positive response to the launch of the inaugural FESPA Middle East 2024. Taking place at the Dubai Exhibition Centre at the end of January 2024 (29 – 31 January 2024, Dubai Exhibition Centre), the event featured a line up of 150 brands and a comprehensive feature programme.

Bazil Cassim, FESPA Regional Manager, Middle East & Africa, comments, “The exhibitor and visitor feedback to the launch of FESPA Middle East has been overwhelmingly positive and reaffirms our decision to expand our offering into the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia region. In response to this, we’re delighted to be returning to the Dubai Exhibition Centre for a second edition in 2025 and look forward to offering a platform that builds on the success and our learnings from the 2024 event. In the meantime, we will continue supporting our growing community in this region through our FESPA Direct membership.”

Further details of FESPA Middle East 2025 will follow on www.fespamiddleeast.com.

[ippnoida]

Fespa in Amsterdam – Look to the East

To some extent, this year’s main Fespa trade show was always going to be overshadowed by Drupa. That’s one reason why Fespa likes to get out of Germany and visit Amsterdam in Drupa years, plus Northern Europe tends to attract a more sign and display oriented crowd.

However, this year’s event was on a much bigger scale than previous Fespa outings to the Rai centre in Amsterdam, with three main halls – 1,2 and 5 – plus a further three – 10,11 and 12 – off to one side. Even better, the press office was handily located in the walkway between the two halves, complete with coffee, and there was a strong WiFi signal throughout the show.

My impression was that the show was busier than I would have expected, especially on the second day. However, a number of the established exhibitors were missing, including HP, Fujifilm and Canon. In part this was due to the upcoming Drupa but it’s also worth noting that this year’s show is a little earlier than usual, meaning that the vendors have to cover the costs of both last year’s and this year’s Fespa in the same financial year, with the added cost of Drupa just around the corner.

For journalists, this problem is amplified because Fespa took place right at the time that many vendors are starting to announce their Drupa plans in the hope of picking up coverage in the May issues of the trade magazines, which will mostly go to press early to mid-April.

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And yet there was still plenty to see at Fespa, mostly in terms of how the large format market is evolving rather than any ground breaking new technologies. I was struck by how many vendors are now rounding out their portfolios, introducing mid-range products to fill perceived gaps in their offerings, but with very little that really raises the bar in terms of higher productivity or lower costs. This is a clear sign that the market has matured and that the vendors don’t see any further value in pouring money into R&D other than for incremental improvements. Nor do I have a sense that we are going to see a lot of new large format kit at Drupa; instead the vendors are moving into newer, more lucrative markets, mainly packaging and textiles, albeit building on the IP they have developed in large format.

In recent years Fespa has become a show of two halves, split between the sign and display markets and the textile printing, particularly for the garment sector. If anything, this contrast between the two halves was even more stark at this year’s show. Consequently, for this story I’m going to concentrate on the sign and display side but will follow up with a separate story on the garment solutions.

The other very noticeable trend was for more Chinese manufacturers which now make up a very large percentage of the overall vendors present. In some cases, the Chinese technology appears to be quite rudimentary, but many Chinese companies can now clearly rival their Western counterparts.

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Angelo Mandelli, Senior Product & Business Development manager for Ricoh Europe’s large format business, explains, “We recognised Flora as a good partner. They are already a Ricoh printhead customer. It’s a very stable device because this is the third generation of Flora hybrid solutions.” He adds, “We could change the brand on this product but anyone with experience in this market would recognize this machine.”

Flora were also happy to accommodate Ricoh with a number of changes, including switching from Gen5 to Gen6 printheads which allows Ricoh to work with a smaller native 5pL drop size. Mandelli adds, “We requested to use linear motors instead of stepper motors, which gives us less energy consumption and less maintenance and the carriage moves more smoothly and is quicker so there are a lot of advantages.”

Mandelli notes, “Flora has a lot of mechanical competence with hardware. We can combine this with our skills in software and can create our ICC profiles to create our own Ricoh hybrid proposition and improve our portfolio. And it’s a quicker approach to the market for us. It takes a lot of time to produce stuff today and we already have a lot of good partners.”

He continues, “There are a lot of advantages to the Flora approach. It has a white cleaning system, an anti-crash sensor and an ioniser bar.” He adds, “And we decided to create ICC profiles dedicated to this product. And we have the Ricoh organisation with our services and sales and logistics team.”

He points out that Flora is very flexible and willing to use different printheads and RIPs to suit OEM partners. This flexibility seems to be a hallmark of Chinese manufacturers, with Pooja Rajpal of Zhongke India making exactly the same point to me earlier this year at the Pamex show in India.

The ink comes from a third party supplier based in EMEA but Mandelli won’t say who. There’s a choice of ink configurations, starting with just CMYK, then CMYK plus two white channels, or CMYK plus one white and one clear ink. Naturally Ricoh has created the waveform to drive the printheads. The RIP is Production Server 23 from ColorGate, which is a subsidiary of Ricoh, complete with dedicated device drivers for the X20. It will produce up to 116 square meters an hour in its Express mode but a more realistic production figure is 50 square meters an hour.

Interestingly, this arrangement is with Ricoh Europe rather than Ricoh as a whole, and so Ricoh is only planning on selling the X20UV in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region. Mandelli says that the company has other arrangements in different regions, such as the US where Ricoh cooperates with EFI. That’s not an option in Europe because the market is more fragmented, and more complicated as there are a lot of EFI dealers. He adds, “But Flora is not so present in Europe so we can offer our support to the product with no competition between us.”

He notes, “We have a lot of experience with the Flora system because the EFI machines are based on them.”

This limited sales strategy also means a limited R&D budget to develop a new solution, making a partnership the most practical option. Mandelli says that Ricoh Europe can put other Ricoh entities in touch with Flora if they want to do something similar for other regions. Mandelli also left open the possibility that Ricoh could use additional products to further expand its portfolio. But for now he says that he prefers to take a gradual approach and build confidence with the smaller hybrid before looking into bigger machines.

Mandelli explains that Ricoh wanted to close a gap in its portfolio between the L5100-series latex rollfed, which is an entry level printer costing around €25,000, and its two UV flatbeds, which sell for €130,000 to €150,000. He adds, “This is a price gap but it’s also a technology gap. We received a lot of requests for a compact hybrid device with the possibility to print to rigid and flexible materials.” Only the latex printer has been developed in-house, at Ricoh Asia, with the flatbed being a 50/50 co-development with another OEM. The X20 fits into this portfolio at around €100,000 to €110,000.

Mandelli says the feedback to the X20UV at Fespa was very positive. The machine that was at the show was shipped directly to Ricoh’s UK base in Telford so that Ricoh could complete its ICC profiles. It should be on sale in the next few weeks.

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Flora also showed off its version of the X20UV. Flora offers customers a choice of Konica Minolta or Ricoh printheads, along with a Flora edition of the PhotoPrint RIP and a one-year warranty, dependent on the local dealer.

Flora showed a number of other printers including its compact J330s inkjet label press, which prints CMYK plus white and can run at 30 mpm at 1200 x 600 dpi. There was also the C25h Pro corrugated printer, which has a maximum media width of 2.5 meters but was paired with a much smaller board feeder. It runs aqueous CMYK inks and can produce around 400 square meters an hour. However, it still appears to be under development.

There were plenty of other Chinese manufactures at the show – around 70 in total – though I didn’t have time to visit them all. But I think that the main takeaway is that the idea that the Chinese only make cheap and cheerful printers is way out of date. There’s very little in the way of technical superiority to distinguish machines made in the US, Europe or Japan, and indeed many of the printers sold by companies in the developed world are actually made in China.

Several people have told me that they believe the Chinese vendors still lack the necessary distribution and support infrastructure to sell into Western countries. Up to now the Chinese vendors have done very well out of OEM partnerships so they didn’t need a sales and support network. But since the pandemic, it appears to me that many of those Chinese vendors are now in the process of setting up distribution through established dealers in Eastern Europe and they already have a strong presence in other regions such as India. Besides, it’s only a matter of time before they start buying those established dealers and owning their own sales and support networks in Europe and the US.

So, for me the rapid expansion of Chinese vendors was one of the most noticeable trends from Fespa, and I would expect that we will see the same at Drupa. However, there were several other themes from Fespa that I will explore in the next part of this story.

First published in the Printing and Industry Journal on 8th April 2024. Reprinted with permission. www.nessancleary.co.uk

[acrylicmirror-goodsense]

Great thanks to everyone who visited our booth at FESPA 2024! It was a fantastic event filled with innovation excitement🌟

[aerolamseo]

Unlock the Power of Visual Excellence at FESPA Global Print!

Join us Today at RAI Amsterdam, Netherlands, as we showcase the limitless possibilities of AeroPro Viscom and connect with our experts at the stall to explore tailored solutions for your unique branding challenges.

Date: March 19 to 22, 2024

Venue: RAI Amsterdam, Netherlands

Stall: A-84, Hall 1

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Explore the endless opportunities in the printing industry with the best exhibition stands, brilliant showcasing ideas, and an excellent team of Expo Stand Services. You can know us and our offerings better at https://www.expostandservice.com/fespa-global-print-expo/