Highlights of the Official pre-drupa Media Conference

Last month, packagePRINTING attended the pre-drupa media conference, where industry leaders announced somewhat guarded plans for the two-week-long trade show, to be held May 29-June 6 in Dusseldorf, Germany. Although much of the focus was on the commercial print industry, several companies discussed what package printers can expect at drupa 2008.

Heidelberg is stepping out with its new “HEI TECH” campaign, which includes its “HEI Performance” and “HEI Value” solutions. The company’s Packaging Print Solutions Hall will feature HEI TECH Centers for Special Applications and Very Large Format and Integrated Packaging Production, as well as Information and Business Centers and A HEI School, for schools and universities, human resources, print buyers, and marketing managers.

Heidelberg will also partner with Adidas to hold live demonstrations of its prepress, printing, and finishing capabilities. The company will also be running three to four folding carton jobs and will demonstrate its PRINECT solution. HEI Light tours will also be offered for attendees, who can register online before the trade show or at the booth.

Kodak’s prepress solutions, including proofing systems, CTP platesetters, digital plates, and the KODAK PRINERGY Workflow System for offset and flexographic printing, will be on display at drupa. The KODAK APPROVAL NX Color Imaging System will feature with a new set of extended gamut donors designed to meet the needs of packaging customers.

Additionally, the company will unveil new features of its Proofing Software that allow customers to proof challenging color jobs on inkjet printers and with the KODAK APPROVAL Digital Color Proofing System. It will also show off the new capabilities of the KODAK FLEXCEL NX Digital Flexographic System, which can produce plates up to a maximum size of 800 x 1067 mm, allowing converters to use it for a broader range of applications. The company also alluded that it will be showing new additions to its Prinergy Powerpack solution.

EFI said that a big trend for the company at drupa will be digital printing. Its Jetrion 4000 narrow-web digital press with full-color label printing capabilities will be on display. The system supports webs up to 12˝ wide and uses Jetrion’s 4- or 6-color UV ink sets to produce full color imaging across a variety of substrates. The company said it is working to expand the Jetrion 4000’s capabilities even further.

For more information on drupa 2008, visit www.drupa.de .