Print Business Outlook Conference 2019, organized by the US-headquartered Association for Print Technologies (APTech) and the Indian Printing Packaging and Allied Machinery Manufacturers Association (IPAMA), took place on 2 February 2019 at India Expo Centre and Mart, Greater Noida. The conference, titled ‘Print: The future is now,’ comprised interesting and interactive discussions by industry professionals about the critical challenges, trends in the print industry and the forecasts about how the industry will fare in the coming years. The conference also brought forward innovation opportunities and challenges in the publishing, printing, packaging and pharma industry that are of great interest to the industry and its senior business professionals.
In an age where digital media is posing a serious threat to print media, the conference emphasized that print media is still growing at a steady pace. Snehasis Roy, technical director of the Times of India, during his newspaper session – ‘Journalism, media, and technology trends and predictions 2019’ – emphasized the importance of print media in India, and said, “If we compare the print media with others, it is still consumed by Indians at the surface level and it cannot be neglected. According to the recent reports, the revenue generated by television and print media is still higher than digital media and it is still growing at a steady pace.”
Giving a practical example to substantiate the fact, he further said, “If you remember Yahoo and Orkut, the search engine and the social media website that ceased to operate in 2014; it proves that media may come and go but print has been surviving since 400 years and still continues to thrive.” The print media today has evolved to immerse the readers’ sense of sight, smell, and touch to further establish its authenticity and corporality. Apart from being cost-effective and eco-friendly, print media lends a concise and compact form of information source in contrast to digital media.
The discussion was followed by a short talk on ‘Digital print and quality control trends in security printing’ by Erwin Wagner, business development manager for security print, Baldwin Vision Systems. He discussed the latest innovation in security printing by citing the example of the Indian currency. Furthermore, the conference discussed trends in UV printing, artificial intelligence and experiences for next-generation printing, understanding the Indian book market and augmented reality and packaging followed by an interactive session with the industry experts.
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