Preskett said: "I had noticed Erik (the hotdog vendor) at different spots earlier in the show and, when he arrived here, I had a chat with him about his business.

"The fact that he follows the flow of people around drupa and sets up wherever he notices the highest visitor traffic is a great confirmation of the high level of visitors we're seeing on the Canon stand.

"So far, the Hotdog-o-meter is indicating a thumbs-up for Drupa 2012."

However, the recommendation is not as strong as 12-months ago, when members were asking for 5.1% in line with the RPI at the time.

Inflation this year is 3.6% and circulars have been sent to each chapel, advising them to request an equal pay increase.

The union and the BPIF last agreed a national figure in 2008, with the concept all but dead now. Unite still wants to bring a national agreement back to the table at some point in the future.

Unite national officer Steve Sibbald said: "Last year we were quite successful - we got around 130 settlements and we would hope to be able to achieve a similar number, if not better.

"Obviously, with the BPIF under a remit not to negotiate a national agreement, the RPI is the best way for us to go and it is nowhere near as high this year as it was last year.

"However, Unite still believes that the best way to go is a nationwide agreement between the union and the BPIF."

Included in the range is the Corner Master round corner creator, the Corner Trim trimmer, the Easy Fly inline single knife trimmer and the Trim & Perf perforator.

The announcement follows recent additions to IFS range, including Photobooks Technology, which it added last month.

According to joint managing director Tony Hards, the additions are in response to UK printers' drive to broaden their scope.

He said: "There will always be a place for our mainstream products, but successful printers understand that they need to keep pushing back the boundaries and creating more options for their customers.

"We take great care to select solutions that will service a growing market demand. With its strong ethos of development of systems that are quick and easy to set up, SCS aims to fulfil the market's needs through flexible and valuable technology."

The Corner Master can create round corners on pre-made square-cornered hard cases by flash heating, squeezing and flattening in one move at speeds which allow it to be run in-line with casing-in lines.

According to Hards, round cornering has always been popular for diaries but is now increasingly used for children's books, for safety reasons, and photo albums as a "distinctive" option.

Visual communications specialist Storbildsbolaget placed the order for the €100,000 bespoke solution to help it manage production, as turnover has increased 100% to €5m in 2012.

Storbildsbolaget managing director Jonas Helke said: "Optimus dash will make our process fully automated rather than having to employ more staff or machines. It gives us instant access to statuses of deliveries, enquiries, order handling and invoices so we can save time and do more with what we have."

The wide-format company supplies banners, billboards and signs to trade fairs and events across Sweden, Norway and Denmark on a diverse set of substrates. Helke said strict time limits on jobs meant that the 30-strong company needed a solution to make quicker decisions on jobs and orders.

He added: "The software is user- friendly so our staff don't need much training to access it. It is configured to our firm so it only asks for relevant information."

Steve Richardson, Optimus sales director, said he was pleased Storbildsbolaget chose Optimus dash as its needs were similar to those of existing customers.

He said: "People still see MIS as something that's associated with litho, but it's not. In the past two years we have become confident that we can offer solutions for digital printers."

Helke believes that the system will bring a return on investment for the company within 18 months. He said: "We can save on manual labour and at least ten per cent on stock as we have more control, and we can increase uptime on our machines."

Environmental leadership programme manager Stephen Goddard said it was in keeping with HP's status as one of the world's most sustainable companies.

"It's something we take very seriously. We're trying to play a role in leading the industry to a more sustainable future," he said.

Goddard said HP required its suppliers to meet sustainability benchmarks - and that it was becoming increasingly common for companies in all industries to insist on having green supply chains.

"We think sustainability is important for the future success of our customers and it's important for the future of the printing industry as well," he said.

Small printers should regard sustainability as an opportunity rather than a threat, according to Goddard.

He said it would be a good way to differentiate themselves from their rivals if they could match them on price and quality.

He added that smaller players often found it easier than bigger companies to become green because they were less bureaucratic and more open to change.

Goddard said that HP had a role to play in educating the industry about sustainability, as most of the tools existed, but not enough companies understood how or why they should be used.

HP goes beyond the legal minimums when it develops products, according to Goddard.

He said the Indigo 7600, WS6600 and 5600 had been awarded the Intertek Green Leaf verification mark, while the company would now offset the carbon emissions generated in the manufacturing and testing of the Indigo 7600, WS6600 and W7250.

The low-odour varnishes can be used in all standard chamber doctors and roller varnishing units, and are suitable for both wet-on-wet and wet-on-dry processes. The company recommends it for use in packaging print in particular. Drupa visitors can obtain more information on the new finishing varnish as part of the drupa PackPlus display.

Using a system of presets, the device can ensure precise ink feeding in every offset press, according to the manufacturer.

The Nip Con integrates the specific parameters of the rollers used in determining the contact strip width, achieving precise matching of the measurement values and the visual colour strip evaluation.

In addition, accuracy to within a fraction of a millimetre provides greater sensitivity and precision over visual evaluation.

According to the supplier, printers using the device can save more than 50% in the adjustment of the inking and moistening rollers, without ink having to be applied to the rollers.

The device automatically switches off such equipment after a pre-defined period of machine inactivity, provided there is no paper waste that needs to be extracted.

When waste has accrued and the machine is needed in operation again, sensors on the Hunkeler device detect the waste and restart the machine.

The time period can be specified and adjusted by the user to best suit the application. In the case of multiple ducts, temporarily inactive ports are automatically closed by gate valves.

The energy-saving system offers additional savings: extraction system performance is dynamically regulated as a function of the accrual of paper residues.

According to the company, users can significantly reduce their power consumption, cut the number of maintenance cycles and extend the life of extraction and compaction equipment.

Managing director Kurt Käser said the system delivered savings of up to 60%.

Additionally, Hunkeler integrates its extraction and compaction systems into heat recovery systems. Thanks to intelligent control of the air exchange, energy-efficiency can be greatly improved and overall operating costs further reduced.

Hunkeler says savings of up to 60% were achievable through using the system

Kuryenet has acquired a Vantage Sorting Solution, which does high speed, high volume sorting, and a Reliant Sorting Solution, which handles lower volumes.

The machines are expected to be installed in September or October.

Kuryenet is a private courier company that specialises in delivering credit cards on behalf of banks.

Pitney Bowes export director Stephane Paris told drupa report daily that Kuryenet currently sorts all credit cards by hand.

He said the Vantage and Reliant would make the process faster and more secure.

The deal was organised by ?Pitney Bowes' Turkish dealer, Gönpa, after 18 months of negotiation, according to Paris.

He said Pitney Bowes had been averaging about €385,000 per year of sales in Turkey - making the return for 2012 at least double.

Pitney Bowes regards Turkey as the emerging market with the third greatest potential after Poland and Russia, Paris said, and expects to conduct more and more business there.

Pitney Bowes operates in 130 countries and has been partnered with Gönpa for 30 years.

Can Mutlu from Kuryenet, left, and Pitney Bowes' president of document messaging technologies, Ramesh Ratan

The company has unveiled two new products, the ProofStar and BlankStar, besides adding new modules to its flagship product, PrintStar at Drupa

The company says that, unlike other systems that claim 100% inspection integrity, its systems are truly 100% because they match the entire print width.

Key to PrintStar's operation is the Smash Web11 processor technology.

"PrintStar is equipped with high resolution cameras, unlike the matrix cameras used in other systems, which enables it to detect the smallest defect in a single work step," said Markus Köhler, business unit manager print at Isra Vision.

The Fujifilm and Xerox joint venture has developed a 1,066mm (42in) wide, roll-fed, aqueous inkjet single-pass printer that is being shown as a technology demo at Drupa.

The four-colour device can be seen on the Caldera stand (Hall 4, stand A14) printing on a wide range of media, from 85gsm coated stock to much heavier canvas and polyester-based stocks.

Caldera's RIP is a key part of the equation as it is responsible for keeping pace with the very high data rate that is required to run the 1,600dpi printer at its 9m/min running speed.

A Fujifilm spokesperson said the company planned to launch the product in Asia Pacific later this year, primarily for the computer-aided design and graphic information systems markets.

However, Xerox, which is responsible for Fuji Xerox sales in the US, Europe and some emerging markets, is understood to be targeting the device much more towards graphic arts production.

This can be seen from the range of substrates and the type of images produced in the sample book on the Caldera stand, which includes prints on backlit film, polyester, canvas, mesh and lightstop, as well as on the live, on-demand demonstrations.

The printer's print speed doubles to 18m/min when printing at lower 1,600x800dpi resolution, taking it from 14 A1 pages per minute (ppm) to 28 A1 ppm.

Pricing for the printer is not currently available and Fuji Xerox would not disclose the cost of the consumables, including the inks and printheads. The company did reveal that the printheads had an average life of 10,000 metres of print and that they would be user-replaceable.

The manufacturer added that the total cost of print, including all consumables and service costs, would be "very competitive" and that the company was aiming for a 2013 launch in the US, Europe and emerging markets.

The new printer has potential for multiple market applications

What are the key trends impacting the visitors and, of course, your customers?

I think that the new technologies that take the industry beyond the usual print applications are key, and all of this is supported by the R&D investments by companies such as Fujifilm.

Do you think Drupa is too focused on technology, though?
Obviously it's traditional for Drupa to focus heavily on technology, but I think this year's show is highlighting a lot of applications. I don't think that you can separate the two, though - new technologies create new applications and new applications can drive new technologies.

On the subject of technology, when you showed your B2 inkjet press at Drupa 2008 there were only a handful of similar machines. However, at this year's show many new vendors are showing B2 digital presses. Is that a concern?
Four years ago, we showed the Jetpress 720 as a technology demonstration. At this year's show, it is commercially available. So while we welcome any newcomers to the B2 digital market, I think we're substantially ahead of our rivals.

But do you think the demand for B2 digital is big enough to support the number of vendors now entering the sector?
I think potentially the market could be one of the biggest in digital printing. Right now, though, I don't think it is so large, but I fully expect demand to rise though as printers realise the potential.

What's the one piece of advice you would like to pass on to you customers?
We always learn from our customers and we're not arrogant enough to tell them how to run their businesses. But if I had to, I would just say talk to us - tell us what you and your business need so we can work on developing the solutions that will help.

Kimoha Entrepreneurs said the Xeikon 3300 with an inline DCoat 330 finishing unit would produce "much faster turnaround times" for the short-run jobs common in the United Arab Emirates.

Kimoha executive director Wolfram Gruening told the drupa report daily the 3300 would also help the company to win new short-run work.

He said Kimoha would have to retrain its sales force to properly exploit these new opportunities in what he said was an underdeveloped market.

The machine will be used for run lengths of less than 2,000 metres, while the company's flexo presses will handle longer jobs, according to Gruening.

He described Kimoha as "the pacemaker with technology in the Middle East", which meant it was a question of when, not if, it would go digital.

Xeikon's director of segment marketing and business development, Filip Weymans, said the Belgian manufacturer had been selling about two 3300s a day at drupa to customers from Latin America, western Europe, Japan and the Middle East.

The Kimoha deal was "the result of the increased attention Xeikon has put into the Middle East", he said.

The 3300 has about 30% of the digital label printer market, according to Weymans.

Kimoha managing director Vinesh Bhimani said his 230-staff firm was expanding and included multinationals such as Singapore Airlines, Nestlé and Johnson & Johnson as clients. He said Kimoha had been named Dubai's third-best innovator out of 73,000 small to medium-sized enterprises.

The Euclid, on show at Drupa, is the world's first digital cutting and creasing machine.

Popular among the packaging designers worldwide, ArtiosCAD has dedicated tools for structural design, product development, virtual prototyping and manufacturing.

The Euclid can process digital files generated by ArtiosCAD that contain the carton's cutting and creasing information to make polymer dyes.

Set-up time for each job is said to be around 15 minutes.

Israel-based Highcon said that it was committed to combining the Euclid technology with that of "best-in-class suppliers" and Esko was its first choice of workflow partner.

Asia-Pacific director Tim Sawyer said about a quarter of visitors to the Presstek stand were from the region.

Indian and Australian companies were showing particular interest in how the 75DI could help them increase efficiency and reduce costs, according to Sawyer.

He said Asia-Pacific visitors - especially those from low-wage countries that couldn't expect to generate any great savings in their labour costs - were keen on technology that would reduce both the number of steps in their production process and errors.

Sawyer said the 75DI, as a waterless machine, offered "a ton of opportunities for packaging in my market".

Packaging companies are responsible for about 35% of interest in the 75DI, according to Europe, Middle East and Africa president Axel Thien.