Pat Henry:  This is Pat Henry at WhatTheyThink.  Today we are in Munich, Germany.  We are with the PrintCity Alliance for their pre-drupa media briefing.  With us today is John Dangelmaier.  Mr. Dangelmaier is President of the PrintCity Alliance.  John, I will begin by asking you to tell us what is the PrintCity Alliance all about and where can we find PrintCity at drupa 2012. 

John Dangelmaier:  The first one, PrintCity was found—we say we are 14 years young so the first acquaintance of PrintCity was at drupa 2000.  After this drupa, with the loose, let’s say conglomerate is not the right word, but the people got together and found this kind of PrintCity, but there was no leader or any organization behind it.  After drupa we all went together and it was a wonderful drupa.  I think its growth has continued and we founded PrintCity officially to be the leader status.  We had more members than we have today, but it’s not that they left PrintCity because we didn’t serve their purpose or their needs, but you had over the years a lot of mergers, acquisitions, and so on.  So we had at the beginning five paper manufacturers and now there are three.   We had three blanket manufacturers and now there is one.  But they all summount together.

It is an alliance of suppliers for the graphic arts industry, machine manufacturers as well as consumables, like inks, like paper, like blankets.  And we all worked together over the years and changed our original—we had always been kind of an exhibition marketing organization.  But now we do valuable publications which are more or less projects which are decided by the members and work out for several things about sustainability, about carbon for print; PSO, which is standardization.  We have energy consumption publications.  We have UV and so on.  These we also do in seminars, basically today decided by the members, Eastern Europe, and South America.  

Pat Henry:  And you have a special location at Messe Düsseldorf.  Where can we find all of your members?

John Dangelmaier:  PrintCity traditionally is in Hall 6.  Hall 6 was a new hall in the year 2000 and we always have been in Hall 6 and it was called PrintCity Hall.  In 2000 we occupied the whole Hall 6.  In the meantime, we have 2000 square inches at this drupa and there you’ll find in Hall 6 centered more or less, that’s all the PrintCity members.

Pat Henry:  Now the PrintCity Alliance theme for drupa 2012 is Print: Seen! Lean & Green.  Can you explain what the message behind those words is?

John Dangelmaier:  Print is clear, naturally.  That’s the most important and we discussed yesterday more or less the future of print.  And then we created the slogan Print: Seen!  Seen is the value-added printing.  Green—we have to respect the environment.  We have to work in a way that will get greener and keep the sustainability.  And then Lean—a lot of arguments are if you have Green you have to invest a lot of money and you get no return.  So we added the Lean and with the Lean you can support your Green.

Pat Henry:  And finally, given the difficult economic conditions in Europe right now, and North America, other places in the world, are the members of the PrintCity Alliance concerned about attendance at drupa or perhaps about the willingness of visitors to spend money on new systems and equipment?

John Dangelmaier:  We look optimistic to drupa and it is after the drupa 2008, which was absolutely a hype, everybody got orders, but afterwards they couldn’t get the money to pay for them to fulfill the orders.  So that was the absolute downturn.  Now we have suffered more or less since 2008 and now it’s always light on the horizon.  That is, drupa is always the highlight of the graphic arts industry and we are very positive that we do everything to attract visitors.  Your question, how they will invest.  This is still an unknown thing.  The interest is there but is the money there.  That is the question.  

Pat Henry:  Well, at WhatTheyThink we will make a point of visiting PrintCity in Hall 6, Messe Düsseldorf, drupa 2012, May 3rd through 16th.  And we are very pleased to have had the opportunity to speak with you, Mr. Dangelmaier.  Thank you so much.

John Dangelmaier:  I thank you very much.

Pat Henry:  Pat Henry, WhatTheyThink.  Thanks for watching.