With 525 attendees coming from 23 countries, an extended educational programme and packed tabletop exhibition, The Inkjet Conference (TheIJC) confirmed its status as the world’s biggest event for inkjet engineering and inkjet chemistry. Following excellent participant feedback, the organisers are already putting together the agenda for TheIJC USA (12-13 April 2018 in Chicago) and the anniversary 5^th edition of TheIJC in Düsseldorf (15-17 October 2018).

This year brought together an audience of 525 technology users and suppliers, which means a 30% increase in attendance compared to 2016. The majority of the delegates visited TheIJC for the very first time. “As a first-timer, I enjoyed the presentations and meeting so many passionate people in the industry. I will definitely be there next year and I have already recommended this conference to my friends”, said Amadeusz Wieteska from University of Lodz.

New in 2017 were also the plenary sessions which opened each day, setting the high technical standard for a total of 63 presentations held on three parallel tracks. Dan Denofsky of Kodak was one of the presenters: “TheIJC is an excellent place to understand latest printhead technology.” All speakers competed for the prestigious Best Speaker Award voted by the audience via the conference app. The winners were as follows:

• Best Speaker Plenary Sessions: Shin Ishikura (Kyocera); runners-up: Shane O’Neill (Fujifilm Dimatix) and Angus Condie (Xaar)
• Best Speaker Track 1: Rob Day (TTP); runners-up: Dr Stéphane Biry (BASF), Dr Nick Campbell (Inca Digital)
• Best Speaker Track 2: Dr Els Mannekens (ChemStream); runners-up: Dr Thomas Willers (Krüss), Dr Kevin Poelmans (Allnex)
• Best Speaker Track 3: Enrico Sowade (TU Chemnitz); runners-up: Daisuke Hamada (Kao Collins), Prof. Marc Van Parys (TexZeppelin)

Very strong in its educational aspect, TheIJC provided also for extraordinary networking opportunities at the tabletop stands – during coffee and lunch breaks, as well as at the networking dinner. Altogether 87 companies and research institutes showcased their solutions in the networking arena, 42% of them exhibiting for the first time. “I was surprised to see a lot of new technologies every year since the first edition of the conference”, said Daijiro Kikuchi from Toshiba Tec and Volker Steffen from KBA-Kammann admitted that “TheIJC is more than helpful for an equipment manufacturer”. In the words of Jordi Limiñana from Limitronic, The Inkjet Conference delivers a “refreshing, encouraging and inspirational recipe of academic lessons and cutting edge developments”.

Organised by the European Specialist Printing Manufacturers Association (ESMA) and Steve Knight from Digital Direct Technologies, with the continuing support of drupa, TheIJC brings its successful concept to America and will stage the first US edition on 12-13 April 2018 in The Westin O’Hare Chicago. Over 50% of the tabletops have already been booked and early bird delegate rates are now available. For more details please visit: http://usa.theijc.com

TheIJC will return to Swissotel Düsseldorf on 15-17 October 2018. Call for papers and tabletop booking is now open. For more details please write to [email protected] or contact ESMA.