Paterson, NJ – A worldwide audience attended drupa 2016, which concluded on June 10 but continues to pay dividends for Colter & Peterson. North America’s largest independent distributor of paper cutters and paper handling equipment experienced the most successful drupa event in its history, and expectations are high for the carryover effect to continue into the third business quarter. 

“Drupa lit the fuse for what has been a crazy last two months. We’ve been exhibiting at drupa since 1990 and it was our most successful trip there ever,” exclaimed Bruce Peterson, President of Colter & Peterson. Prior to the event, he had expected the company’s machines and Microcut® retrofits to be in high demand, in part stemming from a cooperative effort with HP Indigo for Direct-to-Finish finishing automation for digital print operations. The announcement was made at the Dscoop conference in April.

“We enjoyed a substantial amount of booth traffic throughout the show and spent time with people we had spoken with prior to drupa. We also met with dealers from around the world and that led to strong international representation in our booth. Combine that with our HP customer meetings, it led to us selling many Microcut retrofits and some large format paper cutters. In the last two weeks, we have also closed many deals for new and rebuilt machines, and we continue to have a dialogue with numerous other customers.”

At drupa, C&P displayed various Microcut control systems, the automated and highly productive back gauge system with more than 30,000 worldwide installations. The company also demonstrated a CHM precision sheeter in partnership with Shanghai Eureka Machinery.

“We demonstrated the Microcut PLUS WS retrofit system and it attracted a good amount of attention,” said Peterson. “Five of the six cutters we sold to large format customers are at least 126” in size and will have the 15” version of our Microcut PLUS WS installed on them.”

C&P unveiled a next generation static display electrical control package at drupa. In addition to new benefits and options, the Microcut Cutter Control System will be more standardized, with reduced components for easier ordering and installation. It can be installed on nearly any brand guillotine paper cutter between 20 and 150 inches in size to bring machines in line with modern electrical standards. Besides updating safety controls, this new system allows printers and converters to experience productivity spikes of 50% or more with Microcut, which memorizes and recalls cut sequences and produces highly accurate cuts within 1/64^th of an inch.

Peterson said having C&P’s print finishing equipment integrated and certified by HP Indigo at Dscoop led to positive developments at drupa.

“As an HP authorized vendor, we have worked very hard on our end of the relationship. So has HP and it was very evident at drupa. Many of their sales people had customers visit our booth to learn more about the many new features we offer. They understand how a cutting program can be created through HP as a CIP job file and it can be further referenced by the bar code reader. It saves a tremendous amount of make-ready time and that’s a very attractive benefit for printers who do digital short-run work.”