drupa 2012 opened May 3 and ran through May 16 at the Düsseldorf fairgrounds, drawing packaging converters, brand owners, and equipment suppliers for the industry's largest quadrennial trade event. Flexible packaging featured prominently as digital, flexographic, and converting technology vendors targeted food, beverage, and consumer goods applications.
HP demonstrated the Indigo 20000 and Indigo 30000 digital presses for flexible packaging and folding cartons, marking a significant step beyond narrow-web label platforms toward 736 mm web width suitable for bags, pouches, and wide film applications. Multiple beta installations were planned with converters in Europe, North America, and Japan.
Analog flexo suppliers emphasized register stability, shorter changeovers, and energy efficiency. Bobst introduced the F&K 20SIX CI flexo platform with optional Low Energy Operation (LEO) systems conserving thermal energy across drying circuits, exhaust treatment, and servo drive modules—responding to brand owner and converter pressure on operating cost and emissions.
Prepress and consumables suppliers including Esko and DuPont Packaging Graphics showcased next-generation plate imaging and Cyrel plate technologies aimed at raising flexo print quality toward gravure and offset benchmarks while supporting shorter run lengths and faster job turnover.
Converters leaving drupa 2012 reported a clear theme: flexible packaging investment decisions increasingly balanced analog CI flexo capacity for high-volume laminate work against digital platforms for versioning, regional launches, and margin-rich short runs that analog changeover economics struggled to serve profitably.