Country recovers from earthquake as
print is forced to adapt to change
28 July 2011, Tokyo – In the
aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami in March this year, the IGAS
organisers actually had to reevaluate whether they would be able to
hold the quadrennial international exhibition in Tokyo this
September. The exhibition is going forward and gathering steam
although it will have 16% less floor area than the last event in
2007.
I think the event will be an important
show not only for the region but for the entire print industry since
it is many of the Japanese companies who have learnt to adapt to the
changing circumstances that print faces in much of the developed
world and are in fact in the forefront of development of the next
generation of digital ink jet presses.
At a media preview that took place
today, FujiFilm, Screen, Horizon, Ryobi, Duplo, Konica Minolta, and
Komori made presentations about what they will show at IGAS. The only
non-Japanese company that made a presentation today was HP and it
also confirmed the importance of the IGAS show in its overall growth
plans in Asia by announcing that its D-Scoop user event will take
place in Tokyo alongside the event.
The real question for Asian printers is
whether IGAS will be worth visiting and will it have interesting
equipment and technology on display to buy and whether it will have
equipment and demonstrations that show the future of print? Japan has
been amongst the hardest hit economies by the economic crunch of 2008
and its printing industry suffered the steepest decline amongst the
developed economies in 2010. And then came the earthquake and the
tsunami this March.
I believe that IGAS is well
worth a visit for those printers who are growing in Asia and who are
interested in finding out what the next steps may be for them. In the
heavy metal department both Komori and Ryobi are not simply talking
about printing but talking about their special technologies for
printing with UV inks. I also think that printers in Asia can learn a
lot from the Japan Color Standard which will be shown in its own
special stand at the show and from the environmental focus of
Japanese manufacturers.
This is also going to be a really good
show for digital printing since many of the digital press
manufacturers are based here and because the best finishing and
binding equipment for digital print is being manufactured in Japan.
In a country which is perhaps the biggest per capita user of print
and also one of the biggest users and developers of new media and
electronic gadgets, it is quite likely that many of the directions of
where print can go will be examined and settled here. There will also
be a special area where tablets and other futuristic media are shown.
The Tokyo Big Sight location has not
been affected by the earthquake and tsunami and there is no problem
in terms of installing and running heavy machines or any other safety
issue. Although Japan is returning to normalcy each day (yesterday
the tuna auction in Tokyo was again opened to the public) the IGAS
exhibition will economise on electricity as a part of the on-going
daily national discipline.
Naresh Khanna
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