PrintCity Alliance members Cofely, manroland, Océ and UPM delivered a successful Publishing Trends Summit jointly with GIPP, the Russian Guild of Press Publishers, in Yekaterinburg, Russia on February 16. The event drew 130 attendees from this important Russian printing & publishing region, with very positive comments received. Attendance comprised 50% publishers, 40% printers and 10% others.

Publishing Trends Summit

The PrintCity Alliance/GIPP Trends Summit, about the future of publishing magazines, newspapers & books, was held in Yekaterinburg, a large regional city in central Russia. The event covered new technologies, business models and co-operation across the complete value chain.
 
This included news from PrintCity Alliance members Océ and manroland about their initiatives for digital and offset publishing markets. These highlighted the recent strategic alliance between the two companies to supply solutions that cover all of the manufacturing steps within the graphic arts industry by combining print data management, plus digital and offset printing, as well as post processing.
 
PrintCity members UPM and Cofely presented information on market trends, technologies and materials to assist publishing opportunities and provide enhanced production solutions.
 
Highlights
 
The PrintCity/GIPP Publishing Trends Summit featured presentations by prominent regional politicians and business leaders:

- A welcome address by Mr. Vadim Dubichev, the Deputy head of administration for the Sverdlovsk area, focused on the Summit theme and our industry
- Andrey Suleykov, Vice-President of the Moscow print union and CEO of Pushkinskaya Ploschad printing company, was the event moderator and a presenter
- Presentations about the printing market in the Ural Federal District were made by Andrey Popov, President of the Ural Print Alliance and CEO of Format Printing, Victor Rublev President of the PrintUral Union, Igor Grebenkin of the Print Association CAMELOT and Mr. Sergey Simakov, CEO of the Basko Publishing house
- Sergey Salgin, head of the GIPP office in the Ural Federal District and CEO of the Rossiskaya Gazeta Publishing House, presented "Russian Media Market Results from 2010; Prospects 2011"

Benefits Based Trends, Technology & Process Presentations
Presentations by leading PrintCity Alliance member specialists informed an interested and participative audience throughout the day, with many questions being asked:

- Christoph Gauss, Océ – Digital printing opportunities & workflow business solutions
- Michael König, manroland – Web offset printing initiatives, solutions and benefits
- Erik Ohls, UPM – Paper creativity & cooperation along the value chain sharing
- Claus Störchle, Cofely – Optimization and Economy of Energy
 
Hot Topics
 
Digital printing and its strategic position alongside offset printing in newspaper and book printing was much discussed. Also the opportunities from enhanced workflow and the latest web offset printing technologies & solutions.
 
Conclusions
 
Based on the response from the 130 person audience, there is strong interest in similar PrintCity/GIPP knowledge sharing events in Yekaterinburg/The Urals in the future.