by Cassandra Balentine
Xeikon held the Xeikon Café North America 2023 from May 9 to 11, 2023 in Elgin, IL. The bulk of the event took place at the Holiday Inn Conference Center, but there was ample opportunity for the company to show off its new Customer Innovation Center.
“This year’s Xeikon Cafe, North America edition, delivered on the promise to bring relevant content both print providers and label converters need to manage their business,” shares Donna Covannon, director, marketing, Xeikon.
The event kicked off with a welcome note from the company’s new president, Robert Welford, appointed to the position earlier this year. Welford has an extensive background in the printing industry, coming to Xeikon in 2018 after serving as a chief engineer at Fujifilm Electronic Imaging and director of research and development at Xaar.
For much of the event, attendees were split into two tracks—Label and Packaging and Graphic Arts/Commercial Printing.
Topics within the label track included a state of the industry presentation by Marco Boer of I.T. Strategies, as well as discussions on evolving label trends, growing packaging opportunities, sales team motivation, and insights from a panel of label and packaging converters/printers.
The graphic arts track focused on trends in book printing, web to print applications, understanding the mindsets of today’s print customer, a discussion on the best suited technologies, sales team motivation, a state of the industry on the transition from offset to digital by Boer, and a panel discussion of print providers.
When attendees weren’t in learning sessions, they were at the demonstration center, which featured the Xeikon CX500, Xeikon PX3300, Xeikon SX30000 machines, CX500; and Xeikon PX3300.
Time was built in throughout the event for attendees to network with peers and relevant industry vendors. A big draw of the conference was the Partner Fair, which featured many of the event’s sponsors including, Brotech CERM, Color Logic, D&K Group, FLEXcon, FlintGroup, Grafisk Maskinfabrik, grafotronic, Great Lakes Graphics Association, LabelTraxx, Moonflower Pack, Nobelus, Spinnaker, Sun Centre USA Inc, Technau, TLMI, UPM Raflatac, Xeikon Financial, XMPie, and of course, Xeikon.
Xeikon is determined, and poised, to grow its recognition and market share in North America in labels, packaging, and the graphic arts.
Jul2023, DPS Magazine
