Major Categories Ease Show Visits

To help visitors navigate their way through Drupa 2004—daunting, with 17 large exhibition halls accounting for an exhibit area about the size of 34 football fields—show organizers have categorized the displays. Following are the five major categories, along with the halls containing pertinent exhibits:

1. Prepress and premedia, including systems, appliances, and software, along with digital systems suppliers: Halls 1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, and 16.
2. Printing and imaging, including machinery, appliances, and accessories: Halls 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 13, 15, 16, and 17.
3. Bookbinding and print finishing, including machinery, appliances, and accessories: Halls 1, 6, 12, 13, 14, and 16.
4. Paper converting and package production, including machinery, appliances, and accessories: Halls 6, 10, 11, 12, and 16.
5. Materials and services, including consumables (ink, paper, supplies, etc.) and consumer goods: virtually all the halls.

By focusing on certain exhibit categories and studying the hall plan (illustration below), attendees can make the most of their visit to the show by planning their time and the route between various buildings.

Once again, Heidelberg is Drupa's largest single exhibitor, fully occupying about 80,000 square feet in Halls 1 and 2. Heidelberg plans to demonstrate its leadership in computer integrated manufacturing through Prinect, its digital workflow integration that connects its prepress, press, postpress, and digital components.

While digital and conventional printing press machinery occupies much of Heidelberg's floor space, visitors can experience the advantages of Heidelberg's seven solution centers, designed to meet the needs of all segments of the print media industry: Prepress Solutions, Quick Print Solutions, Commercial Print Solutions, Industrial Print Solutions, Digital Print Solutions, Commercial Web Solutions, and Postpress Solutions.

The exhibit also will feature a specific Heidelberg Prinect Information Center and the Print Media Academy.

Hall 6, consisting of nearly 260,000 square feet, is fully occupied by Print City, a strategic alliance of more than 50 graphic arts companies from around the world. Print City participants, spearheaded by Agfa, MAN Roland, MBO, Océ, QTI, Sappi, Sun Chemical, and UPM-Kymmene, include equipment manufacturers, auxiliary systems suppliers, software companies, and consumables suppliers.

Halls 15 and 16 will be devoted to press manufacturers KBA, Komori, and Mitsubishi, while digital printing will be showcased primarily in Halls 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7. Additional large exhibitors at Drupa include Bobst, Körber Paperlink, and Müller Martini, along with Cerutti, Creo, Jagenberg, Scitex, and Xerox.

A used machinery exchange will occupy a special pavilion at Drupa 2004.

American vendors will be well represented, although many large firms exhibiting under the name of their German subsidiary do not show up on the U.S. exhibitor roster.

More than 150 companies appear on that roster, including about 60 that will exhibit in one of two North American Pavilions (prepress and premedia firms in Hall 9, printing vendors in Hall 15). The group exhibit is organized by Messe Düsseldorf North America and co-sponsored by NPES The Association for Suppliers of Printing, Publishing and Converting Technologies.

Next month in Countdown Drupa: More about the city of Düsseldorf and its famous fairgrounds, Messe Düsseldorf.