Canon’s Most Successful Drupa Ever Demonstrates the Power to Move

Canon Central and North Africa reported its most successful experience at drupa 2024, the leading trade fair for the printing and graphics industry.

Despite visitor numbers being down on the 2016 edition, customer engagement, investment and visitor interest in Canon’s offerings saw current and potential customers flocking to the Canon stand to find out how the latest printing solutions and support services from Canon and its technology partners could help to sustainably transform their businesses. 

From a sales perspective, the resultant number of leads and revenue generated far outstripped projections for the event. Canon’s unique vision of print’s ‘power to move’ received significant attention from visitors eager to interact with the hands-on print application showcases.

Approximately 6,000 visitors explored the multi-sensory, immersive experience in The Core that featured World Unseen, an inclusive photography initiative brought to life by extraordinary, elevated prints.

Launched at drupa 2024, Canon’s ‘The Power To Move’ campaign sought to demonstrate the power of print to move people emotionally, achieve positive change, and move businesses forward using Canon’s transformative technologies, expertise, and support.

Through curated workflows, Canon displayed its latest enabling technologies with partners, demonstrating real-life customer solutions and inspiring visitors.

In the production printing category, customer investment in Canon’s imagePress v1000 and v900 color series, as well as the varioPRINT mono toner devices, significantly exceeded projected numbers. This strong showing underscores toner’s enduring role as the digital printing technology of choice for many print service providers.

With approximately 35 deals signed at the event, Canon’s commitment to innovation across its entire product range was evident, as sales of the Arizona, Colorado and imagePROGRAF large format options also impressively surpassed expectations.

This reflects the popularity and growth opportunities of large format outputs, including applications for interior décor, wallpaper, packaging, and fine art. Canon also showcased the new generation of colorWAVE and plotWAVE printers for CAD applications.

The stand also presented visitors with a glimpse of Canon’s key collaboration activities, with the elevated prints (printed on the Canon Arizona) of the World Unseen (exhibition proving to be extremely popular. This exhibition premiered at GITEX Africa in Morocco and will be presented in several African countries throughout 2024, enabling people from across the region to enjoy the immersive experience.

The World Unseen exhibition invites visitors – blind, partially sighted, and sighted – to experience photography in a unique, innovative, and immersive way. It is a transformative pathway, offering multi-sensory experiences that connect individuals with powerful images and stories through elevated prints, audio descriptions, soundscapes, and braille, fostering inclusivity and deeper appreciation for diverse perspectives.

Several collaborative projects were also showcased in the Printworks area, demonstrating how partnerships have the potential to change perceptions and revolutionise the industry:
• Creative Futures winner Bower Collective, a UK provider of natural household and personal care products in reusable packaging, illustrated how, when experts from the industry collaborate to develop campaigns, the result is a highly targeted, high-value and successful campaign that meets the complex needs of modern B2C businesses to acquire, nurture and retain business using omni-channel campaigns.
• The Publishing 2030 Accelerator, born out of the Future Book Forum, a Canon-led industry community initiative, focused on bringing about meaningful progress on sustainability in publishing globally.
• Canon’s support of various charitable partnerships was highlighted, from the UN SDG Book Club African Chapter to UK charity Topic Heroes. During the show, together with its finishing partners, Canon printed and donated around 10,000 books to organizations around the world. The same number of postcards, posters, and brochures were donated to German non-governmental organizations.
• Canon worked with German furniture retailer, POCO to show how programmatic print allows them to reach their target customers and attract them instore through printed products such as wallpaper, window and floor graphics, table tops and furniture liners.
• Demonstrating its support for diversity within the industry, Canon also hosted a successful ‘Girls Who Print’ networking event.

“Drupa is a flagship event within the global imaging industry, and Canon was pleased to host 40 of our partners and customers from across North, East, and West Africa, showcasing the breadth of our reach within the African continent, at the 2024 edition,” said Amine Djouahra, B2B Business Unit director, Canon Central and North Africa.

“For us, it was an opportunity to engage with our stakeholders and the wider global print community and demonstrate the far-reaching impacts of our market-leading portfolio of technologies,” Djouahra added. “By highlighting actual use cases and through collaborations with numerous technology partners, Canon demonstrated print’s power to captivate and drive change in various ways. Together with its customers and partners, Canon will continue to innovate and shape the future of the imaging industry with innovative business models and new technologies and services.”