The doors closed on Thursday on what many considered to be the best Print Show of the ten exhibitions staged to date.
Combined with the Sign Show, the event drew an 5,567 visitors across the three days. This was 4% higher than last year when attendance had been boosted by visitors from the PPM show taking place in an adjacent hall. On a like for like basis, attendance was around 12% up on 2025.
Organiser Chris Davies said there had been more pieces of equipment on the floor than ever before. As well as countless large format (and not so large format) printers, this included digital presses from Fujifilm, Konica Minolta, Oki and Kyocera for commercial and label printers.
He says: “We’re delighted with the response to both shows this year. More people were in the hall across the three days and that is a reflection on the quality of the events we put on. It was the best line-up of exhibitors we have ever had, with some of the biggest names in print in attendance; HP, Epson, Roland DG, Agfa, Hybrid Services (Mimaki), SwissQPrint, Konica Minolta, Vivid Laminating, CMYUK, Plockmatic and Soyang to name just a few.
“We’ve had some excellent feedback from exhibitors, some of which have already committed to returning in 2027, and we’ll be making announcements on that in due course.”
Fujifilm used the event to stage the trade show debut of the Revoria PC2120 120ppm six-colour press. Visitors were invited to compare the difference between a standard CMYK image and one with additional pink and green toners used to produce an RGB equivalent gamut. A large pink bear wearing a lime green cape provided a photo stage. Visitors were captured, the image transferred into Fujifilm’s workflow and from there directly to the print queue for the new press which had been set up to print two version of the photo: one using the extended gamut colours, and on the reverse a standard CMYK version for comparison.
Konica Minolta gave its customers a first view of the AccurioLabel 231 label press as well as the light production C5080 and flagship C14010S to demonstrate the creative possibilities of using white.
Connect Print, a relative new distribution and sales service business had the Kyocera Taskalfa 15000C on its stand as an inkjet press for informational print, books and manuals.
Plockmatic booked sales of more than £500,000 during the event justifying a stand that had squeezed as much equipment on as possible. This renamed from Renz coil binding to the first appearance of the Box Autofold, a straight line carton gluer for short run glued cartons.
The same machine, albeit in a different livery, was featured on the Encore Machinery stand where managing director Paul Davidson had gathered a series of value contributing devices at a low cost. The carton gluer was accompanied by the Oxo creaser folder running through a range of folds on an A4 sheet with push button change from half folds, to Delta, to gatefolds and Z folds almost instantly.
Vivid was able to show real life results from its Razar enhancement machine. This had been a launch at the show last year and was now being sold. Samples of real production by customers using raised spot varnish and sharp foil were on hand in a glass display case. Or would have been had some impressive examples not disappeared for a reasons that the organiser might wish to look into.
