“This is the biggest and by far the best Fespa we’ve ever put on. It’s the most in-depth show of digital printing the world has ever seen,” said chief executive of Fespa Neil Felton in a short speech before he and Fespa president Lascelle Barrow jointly conducted a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the show’s entrance.

Felton revealed afterwards that visitor pre-registration figures were at record levels, 4,000 over Hamburg’s Fespa Digital 2011 pre-reg figure of 19,000. “This is our largest pre-registration figure in history,” he said, adding that the total exhibitor figure was more than 450, around 520 with European Sign Expo figures factored in.

The Fespa Print Census consists of 30 questions and aims to reach a minimum of 2,500 respondents. The full report will be launched this time next year at Fespa 2015 in Cologne, drawing together online responses and face-to-face interviews conducted at all Fespa shows to the end of 2014, when the census closes. Interim data will also be published in summary every quarter until Fespa 2015. 

After opening Fespa Digital 2014, Felton added: “The campaign this year I think has resonated very well with the audience. I think they also like the idea that we have centralized hubs rather than dotted around. This is a different way of doing features and I think there will be a lot of activity happening there. That’s why we spent hundreds and thousands of euros on the hubs as part of our profit for purpose ethos.”

In a short speech before the show was opened Fespa president and co-founder of wide format business Augustus Martin, Lascelle Barrow said: “I’d like to thank our main sponsors for their patience and giving us hope and expectation. We are going from strength to strength. As we, certainly in the UK, are now officially out of recession this should be a very prosperous exhibition.”

To respond to the Fespa Print Census visit www.fespa.com/census.

Printers completing the census will be entered into a draw to win an all-expenses paid trip to Fespa 2015. Visitors to Fespa Digital 2014 completing the census will be entered into a daily prize draw to win a bottle of champagne. The draw will take place on the Fespa stand (A2-438) at 4.30pm each day.

The completed census will provide insight into the wide format community’s size, business performance, growth prospects and key areas of development and investment. It will use the framework of the Fespa World Wide Survey, undertaken periodically since 2007, with data analysed by independent industry research organisation InfoTrends.

Fespa Digital 2014 is being held at Munich Exhibition Centre this week (20-23 May).