First Tissue World Digital Days deemed a success by attendees
After Tissue World Miami 2020 was first postponed from its original April dates to November, and then, as the Coronavirus pandemic continued to curtail international travel and in-person meetings, the event organizers Informa Markets faced a dilemma – postpone the biennial event or bravely enter the new world of virtual event planning and production. Rather than delay until 2022 an event that typically draws attendees, participants, and exhibitors from around the world to Miami, Informa Markets embraced the virtual meeting trend, creating Tissue World Digital Days.
Opening 11 November, the three-day event consisted of five live online sessions featuring 44 speakers, moderators, and panelists. Complementing the live webinars were a number of pre-recorded sessions. Despite — or perhaps because of — its virtual nature, Tissue World Digital Days drew 44 speakers and presenters from several countries and registrants from 97 countries across the globe.
“The feedback we have received from attendees, exhibitors, and speakers has been overwhelmingly positive,” said Agnes Gehot, deputy event director, Informa Markets. “We also have learned anecdotally that attendees and exhibitors were able to accomplish some business objectives in one-to-one virtual meetings and networking sessions.
“While virtual events will never be a completely satisfactory replacement for in-person gatherings, we are extremely pleased that we were able to attract more participants than would have been able to travel to Miami for Tissue World,” Gehot added.
Tissue World Miami is one of five global events in the Tissue World Portfolio, and also postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic were Tissue & Paper Bangkok 2020 and Tissue World Istanbul 2020. To compensate for this, Tissue World Digital Days included live webinars focused on southeast Asia, Turkey, and Latin America.
The next Tissue World Miami is slated for 16-18 March 2022. Tissue & Paper Bangkok is planned for 16-18 June 2021; and Tissue World Düsseldorf is scheduled for 21-23 September 2021. New dates for Tissue World shows in Istanbul, Turkey; and São Paolo, Brazil; will be announced soon.
2023 promises an interesting ride for print in India
Indian Printer and Publisher founded in 1979 is the oldest B2B trade publication in the multi-platform and
multi-channel IPPGroup. While the print and packaging industries have been resilient in the past 33 months since the pandemic lockdown of 25 March 2020, the commercial printing and newspaper industries have yet to recover their pre-Covid trajectory.
The fragmented commercial printing industry faces substantial challenges as does the newspaper industry.
While digital short-run printing and the signage industry seem to be recovering a bit faster, ultimately
their growth will also be moderated by the progress of the overall economy. On the other hand book
printing exports are doing well but they too face several supply-chain and logistics challenges.
The price of publication papers including newsprint has been high in the past year while availability is diminished by several mills shutting down their publication paper and newsprint machines in the past four years. Indian paper mills are also exporting many types of paper and have raised prices for Indian printers. To some extent, this has helped in the recovery of the digital printing industry with its on-demand short-run and low-wastage paradigm.
Ultimately digital print and other digital channels will help print grow in a country where we are still far behind in our paper and print consumption and where digital is a leapfrog technology that will only increase the demand for print in the foreseeable future. For instance, there is no alternative to a rise in textbook consumption but this segment will only reach normality in the next financial year beginning on 1 April 2023.
Thus while the new normal is a moving target and many commercial printers look to diversification, we believe that our target audiences may shift and change. Like them, we will also have to adapt with agility to keep up with their business and technical information needs.
Our 2023 media kit is ready, and it is the right time to take stock and reconnect with your potential markets and customers. Print is the glue for the growth of liberal education, new industry, and an emerging economy. We seek your participation in what promises to be an interesting ride.
