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drupa 2008 further develops its global significance: Around 391,000
visitors from 138 countries
The mood at 2008, the world’s largest and most important fair for the printing and media industry, can hardly be better. The investment climate is extremely good and has by far exceeded expectations. At the end of the 14-day fair the 1,971 exhibitors from 52 countries were unanimous in reporting an extremely high number of promising contacts and successful deals concluded. "drupa 2008 has sent out a clear signal: thanks to numerous innovations and new fields of business the print media sector is as agile as ever," summarises Albrecht Bolza-Schünemann, drupa President and CEO at Koenig & Bauer AG. "This is clearly reflected in the numerous deals concluded with virtually all key business regions." Overall, drupa exhibitors announced deals concluded worth more than Euro 10 b. Sectoral insiders suspect the actual investment sum to be considerably higher.
Around 391,000 visitors from 138 countries and 3,000 journalists from 84 countries travelled to Düsseldorf to gather information on innovations, further developments and new fields of business. Accounting for 59 % of visitors the proportion of international visitors rose by 4 percentage points over the last event four years ago. Commenting on the results for drupa 2008 Messe Düsseldorf CEO Werner Matthias Dornscheidt said: "This means drupa has further developed its global market significance and its international status. Given the difficult economic climate this is a remarkable success." He then added: "Happily, we were able to increase the proportion of overseas visitors here to 43 %." Particularly contributing to this growth were Asian and Latin American trade visitors with 7 % coming from South and Central America and 15 % from Asia (2004: 13.6 %). At a surprising level of 6 % the proportion of North American visitors remained constant. “We had anticipated slight drops not only because of the high level of the Euro,” explained trade fair boss. “But these figures also clearly show: drupa is a world beater and nothing moves in the print and media industry without it!” |
