Dubai -- Terrific! and Fantastic! were two over-used descriptions given by exhibitors at the 2009 edition of Gulf Print being held over four days from April 6th to 9th in Dubai’s Airport Expo Centre. The show attracts key international suppliers of printing machinery, printing and publishing software and ancillary equipment,

With visitor registrations considerably up compared with the last edition of the show, a number of exhibitors have already notched up an excellent number of sales leads.

“The numbers of visitors are much higher than we had expected, especially in these tight economic times,” said Ayman Aly, Product Manager at Canon.

“We have had a good number of serious enquiries from potential customers from all over the region, with particular interest being shown in our imagePRESS C1+ which is the only 5-colour digital device on the market incorporating clear toner technology and which allows printing on up to 300gm paper.”

Abdul Ghani, a Technical Engineer with MagnaJet was similarly enthusiastic. “Interest in our large format (3.2 metre) inkjet printer has been magnificent, especially from the Saudi delegations. Of course, the fact that we can sell this printer for roughly a third the price of similar machines, even though it features 12-Spectra Skywalker technology helps us quite a bit.”

“What we are continuing to see are decision maker customers coming in,” says Heidelberg’s Mazen El Tibi standing next to his SM52 5-colour offset press. “Already we have sold some machines and have had very positive feedback from potential customers.”

HP’s George Semaan said that GulfPrint continues to be a very important show for the industry and for HP in particular. “As expected we are receiving very focused customers, some of whom come to close deals whilst others are seeking more information about the products. We have used this show to launch our T1120 MFP large format printer and are showing off both products from both our graphic and technical segments.”

Chris Lynch of Xerox has hardly had a minute to himself, “though I’m not complaining for one minute,” he adds hastily. “We are getting an excellent amount of interest from visitors from all over the Gulf and Day 2 was even busier than Day 1, which is traditionally the busiest day of the show. We have used this exhibition to launch three new digital presses and the interest has been much better than our wildest expectations.”