Welcome to the April edition of Converting Today. It's a job well done for Mack Brooks following another successful showing at its ICE Europe 2013, which was held in Munich at the end of March.
The event recorded a marked 16% increase in visitors compared to the last show - 6,600 visitors from an impressive 64 countries descended on the Munich event to take in the latest developments in the field of web-based converting.
Also encouraging to the show's organisers, would have been the percentage of international visitors at this year's show: 44% of all visitors stemmed from outside Germany, with Great Britain, Italy, Austria and France among the major contributors.
This year, ICE Europe was co-located with new trade fair CCE International, the exhibition for the corrugated and folding carton industry. According to the organisers, the exhibition launch was a success, attracting around 2,000 trade visitors that importantly, were not included in its end-of-show total visitor count for the ICE exhibition.
In this issue we feature a timely focus on the carton and corrugated sector from market guru Sally Cousins. She looks at the way that paper and board producers are proactive in coming up with a range of products and services to provide the converter with a more streamlined production process, as well as meeting
environmental demands.
Complementing this is an expert opinion piece from Arzu Ilhan Babaoglu, general manager of large-format printing, sign and display for EMEA at HP. She argues that corrugated converters are under a number of pressures including diminishing margins on commodity converting jobs; requests for shorter run lengths, and changes in the products required. A fascinating read.
In addition, we analyse the latest developments in the field of web inspection and delve deeper in an area that is enjoying a sustained period of innovation and product development.
Finally, we put the spotlight on the 10th edition of Converflex, and the co-located Grafitalia event, set to the be the show's most successful yet.
As always, to get in touch, please email on tim.sheahan@globaltrademedia.com or call on +44 (207) 936 6881.
Tim Sheahan,
Editor
