According to Duplo UK managing director Peter Jolly around 300 visitors from just over 200 companies attended the two-day event at London’s Somerset House last week.

“We did around £300,000 of business at the show, which considering we had already closed a lot of business in November, what with that being our half-year, is great. So the event was more about filling our pipeline in the run-up to Ipex and we were astounded to have secured so much business at the show,” said Jolly.

Deals signed at the show included Rapidity ordering a Duplo DC-745 and an Esko Kongsberg cutting table for Prontaprint Walsall.

“What was really pleasing was that we also had double the number of international visitors this time around from some of our European distributors,” added Jolly.

UK launches at the show included the refreshed hybrid litho and digital bookletmaking line, the automated 500i Duetto, the DC-745 slitter-cutter-creaser shown for the first time with an integrated folder and the new DSC-10/60i collator towers.

“Needless to say our new relationship with Photobook Technology for its Mita range of lay-flat photobook kit also created a real buzz at the show,” said Jolly

“It’s probably fair to say it’s not necessarily commercially relevant to everyone today, but we saw at London Calling that it planted a few seeds in the minds of a lot of printers by getting them thinking about taking a fresh look at how they finish.”

According to Jolly, the London Calling partners, Balreed, Esko, Fedrigoni, Friedheim, Fujifilm, Renz, Vivid and VPress, also had a successful event.

“For us the success at the show is measured in many ways, but one of the key ones is the level of integration we achieve with our partners. They were there from day one and they all stayed true to our joint goal of inspiring our visitors,” he said.