Canon Middle East reveals plans for Gulf Print & Pack

Underlining its commitment to the professional print market, Canon Middle East has announced its largest ever presence at Gulf Print & Pack 2011, the region’s premier show dedicated to the printing, graphics and packaging industry. For the first time ever, Canon and Océ will jointly showcase their complete range of products and solutions exhibiting its broad portfolio of production and large format printing systems now available to the professional print market. The four day event will be held at the Airport Expo from 14^th March.

“The two years since the last Gulf Print & Pack have been a period of enormous change for Canon and our professional print customers”, commented Ayman Aly, Production Print Product Manager, Canon Middle East. 

“The last show in 2009 was the launch pad for Canon Production Print Solution in the Middle East and North Africa region, which marked Canon’s real debut as a serious contender in the production print marketplace.  Since then we’ve worked consistently to develop a world-class range of professional print technologies, solutions and business development tools, all designed to help professional printers evolve their businesses and achieve better margins by creating new value-added services,” added Aly.

The Canon Middle East stand at Gulf Print & Pack will be divided into dedicated zones and will showcase how products can efficiently perform different print jobs based on the printing application and vertical market requirements. The demonstrations will help to address, the production challenges that Canon’s professional print customers face within the graphic arts and CRD sectors.  Customers will also have the opportunity to learn more about added digital print and business building tools that will enable them to develop their business further and open up new revenue opportunities.

The various Canon zones at Gulf Print and Pack are as below:

Transpromo Zone: Canon will showcase complete solutions catered to different industries involving transactional and promotional printing activities. In this zone, Canon will demonstrate how to benefit and leverage on transpromotional opportunities for these industries such as creating dynamic and personalised adverts on bills and statements.

Promo Zone: In this zone, visitors will get to experience a live demonstration of printing promotional collaterals such as brochures, invitations, direct mails and postcards. Visitors will also experience real-time personalised applications for the production of such promotional collateral. 

Print on Demand (POD) Zone: Printing fully finished materials involving the requirement of printing applications on demand will be showcased in this zone. This includes X-Rays, Photo books, Books, Magazines, News Letters, Flyers, etc. Visitors will get to see the start-to-finish processes involved in printing and producing materials within the sphere of POD.

Proofing Zone: Catering to the offset industry involving Pre-Press, Commercial Offset Printers and Creative Designers, this zone will provide live demonstrations on how Canon technology such as the imagePRESS C1+ and imagePROGRAF can produce high quality proofs required for this industry. Visitors will gain proper understanding with demonstrations involving ISO certification processes, media handling and colour accuracy. 

EBBP Zone: Canon will also offer structured business support and advice to show-goers, with a timetable of short Essential Business Builder workshops. Essential Business Builder consultants will be available on the stand throughout the show to help printers with specific queries, and to guide them on how specific solutions can help them achieve their business goals.

Service & Support Zone: This zone will be promoting Canon’s service value proposition involving e-maintenance and industry leading web support for customers.

All these zones will be powered through partners including Fastbind, Kern, Taopix, Helix, Medicasoft, GMC, Planet Press and Poster Artist and GMG

Among the range of products, the highlight will include several imagePRESS colour and monochrome presses, many of which will be running live customer jobs managed by the Helix Production Workflow. 

The new imageRUNNER ADVANCE PRO series of light production engines will offer new-to-digital printers an affordable and scalable point of entry to the benefits of digital light production. Commercial printers and CRDs looking to harness the business potential of large format applications such as graphics and signage will see a selection of Canon imagePROGRAF printers, offering photo quality and optimal productivity.

On the Océ front, products include the Océ VarioPrint 6320 Ultra, Océ Arizona 550 XT with Onyx software, Océ ColorWave 600, Océ CS2436 ReproKiosk and a Continuous Form Application area.

“Through our collaboration with Océ, Canon is entering the signage and display market. It will also be showing a concept product for the outdoor graphics display market for the first time. Canon now offers a complete solution for wide format customers from indoor to outdoor printers,” added Aly.