Ricoh South Africa hosted a Buzz Session to discuss the trends and latest innovations in print shown at drupa 2016. The event took place on 20 July at Ricoh’s Head Office in Bedfordview.
At drupa 2016, Ricoh showcased new features of the Ricoh Pro VC60000 next generation continuous feed inkjet platform. These new features will empower customers to print more productively, save time and money and expand their portfolio of offerings.
Also unveiled was the Ricoh TotalFlow Suite, a range of solutions expanding the portfolio of workflow solutions to support commercial print service providers and corporate enterprise clients.
Also on exhibit was the TotalFlow solution that improves visibility into and streamlining of short run and on demand book production. This offering addresses the challenges faced by book printers who seek tools to seamlessly track and efficiently complete the kinds of jobs the modern book market desires.
Ricoh reported positive results at drupa 2016. 1837 exhibitors from 54 countries have reported excellent business deals, promising contacts, and a optimistic spirit for the global print industry. The re-positioning of drupa and its focus on future themes with strong growth potential, such as 3D printing, functional printing or packaging printing proves to be a real asset. Be it publication, commercial, packaging or industrial printing, printing technology offers matching solutions for all of these applications while opening up new lines of business and business models at the same time.
When we asked Vaughan Patterson, Product Marketing Operations Manager for Production Print at Ricoh SA, if people are feeling positive about the future of print he said, ‘There was definitely a much more positive attitude towards print at this drupa as opposed to 2012. The print market is estimated to grow from Euro 410B to Euro 420B from 2016 to 2020, a growth of 0,5%, but halting the decline seen from 2007 to 2015. Middle East and Africa is estimated to grow from 3 to 4 Billion Euro in the Commercial and Packaging Sectors whilst Publishing remains flat at 3 Billion Euro.’
Patterson also said that there was a lot of interest shown from Africa in purchasing equipment and he is confident that Ricoh SA will see a number of purchases as a result of work done at drupa.
He presented his five take aways from drupa at the Buzz Session:
– Digital is mainstream.
– Digital printing of Packaging.
– Inkjet 3.0.
– Special Effects.
– Automation is key – Industry 4.0.
Newly appointed national manager of Ricoh SA’s Production Printing Business Group, Frank De Afonseca, attended his first drupa this year and looked at the ‘Future of Print’, his presentation included:
– Industry optimism.
– Overlapping technologies.
– Packaging grows as a digital opportunity.
– Convergence of applications.
– Automation and service grow.
