Fespa forges ahead with Global Expo

The theme for Fespa’s flagship usually annual event, which is co-located with European Sign Expo, is “Bringing Colour Back”.

“What we were looking at is something that is relevant in the current climate, we’re re-engaging, reinvigorating the market, something I think it really needs. It’s had a really tough year and a strong and powerful event like Fespa will help reenergise a lot of printers,” said Fespa CEO Neil Felton.

While Fespa was recently forced to cancel November’s Fespa Mexico, Felton said he was confident that next year’s Global Expo would remain on track.

While next April’s Drupa has been struck with a raft of high-profile withdrawals by the likes of Canon, EFI, Fujifilm and HP, which are all regular Fespa exhibitors, Felton said since exhibitor sales started in September the event has already secured more than 180-plus exhibitors and he was confident of the final tally being “well over 400”.

He said that the RAI and other bodies are working with Fespa on initiatives like contactless entry, temperature checks, creating a floorplan that encourages social distancing, and limiting visitor numbers in each hall, although he said regarding the latter the numbers were “within the norms of what we would have at the show, so that’s not a challenge”.

In terms of visitors, he said the organisation was confident of welcoming “well over 12,000” visitors across the show’s four days and highlighted that at the last Fespa in Amsterdam, 60% of visitors didn’t fly and 50% actually drove “because it’s beautifully located”.

[source Printweek]