Xeikon Café Exhibition and Conference (20-23 March 2018 in Belgium) will include an impressive set of speakers from both brands and printers with thought-provoking and inspiring presentations that will provide the audience with tangible ideas and concepts to implement in their own businesses. The conference will explore how packaging innovation can enhance and elevate businesses through a series of strategic business-oriented presentations.

“We are excited to announce this year’s speaker line-up for the Conference element of the Xeikon Café,” says Danny Mertens of Xeikon Café. “We are proud to have such a high-calibre group of speakers, featuring key players from the label & packaging industry as well as some well-known and respected brands. The purpose of the Conference is to bring strategic views from printers and brands into the discussion and highlight what benefits they can each draw from digital production through sharing their own unique stories of innovation.”

Keynote: ‘Igniting Innovation Initiatives’ by Andrew Vorster
“This year’s overall event theme is ‘Learn. Connect. Discover.’ By bringing key players from across the industry together, we aim to educate and inspire businesses to recognize the enormous potential of digital production and discover how it can benefit their own businesses,” Mertens continues. “Introducing a new technology into the mix can be a daunting prospect and requires a leap of faith to embrace innovation and do things differently. This is why we have invited Andrew Vorster as our keynote speaker; he brings a wealth of experience in this area and is able to truly inspire an audience with his vision.”

With a background of 30+ years of experience driving innovation across a wide range of industries, Andrew has built a reputation as a passionate technologist, innovator and disruptor. Describing himself as an ‘Innovation Catalyst’, Andrew will explore ways in which an organisation can become more innovative and, intriguingly, discover what alcohol distillation and innovation have in common. Andrew is passionate about dispelling the common myth that ‘innovation takes place in an innovation funnel’ – an attitude that often constrains organisational thinking and excludes valuable input from a much broader ecosystem. He will provide insight into the actions and activities required to engage a team, department or an entire organisation to move attitudes towards a spirit of innovation.

The Keynote session takes place daily, from March 20 through 22 at 10:30u.

Conference Speakers – Brands
With competition from private labels and e-commerce ever increasing, brands need to continually develop new ways to make their products stand out on the shelf and be relevant to their specific target markets. Digital production not only delivers tangible benefits in terms of faster turnaround times, cost-effective production of short runs and improved customer service, it also offers ways to differentiate a brand through customisation, versioning and personalisation, which are increasingly demanded by today’s consumers. At the Xeikon Café Conference, three major consumer brands will be sharing specific examples of how digital production techniques have helped their businesses stand out in a crowded market.

• Tuesday March 20, AB-InBev: Johan Van de Velde will illustrate how digital printing can meet brand requirements perfectly by presenting details of a promotional campaign conducted for Tomorrowland, a huge dance festival for which AB-InBev produced limited edition beer cans with a variety of designs. He will provide insights into the challenges this project presented and how digital helped overcome those.
• Wednesday March 21, Mondelēz International: Patrick Poitevin continually explores the challenges of digital printing on new materials. He will share examples of popular personalised campaigns for the likes of Cadbury, Milka and Toblerone, as well as his thoughts on the future of digital production and how to continue to profitably address changing market demands.
• Thursday March 22, Nom Noms World Food: founder, CEO & Food lover Lisa Sohanpal will share her brand story, including how she revolutionised the ready meals market and achieved award-winning packaging designs. Her philosophy is that innovative packaging engages customers; and she will describe her ongoing search for future innovations to take her packaging designs to an even more innovative level.

Conference Speakers – Printers
For printers and converters, digital production technologies can open up whole new markets and broaden a company’s portfolio of services for both new and existing customers. At the Xeikon Café Conference, three experienced label and packaging players are sharing their real-life experiences of how digital has positively impacted their business.

• Tuesday March 20, Altrif Label: early adopter Altrif Label has been using digital print technology for almost 30 years. Today, the company still uses a variety of digital presses next to its conventional production, and is frequently a beta site for new product releases. Niko Dhondt will share the company’s business story, focusing on how digital has helped drive success and how he sees the future of digital printing technology evolving.
• Wednesday March 21, Limo Labels: Technical Advisor Carsten Stahl Hansen will focus on how Limo Labels implements complementary digital label printing technologies – dry toner and UV inkjet – to benefit its business. He will explain how digital printing helps them remain successful and differentiate themselves in the market; and he will shed light on how to choose the most suitable technology for a given project.
• Thursday March 22, Pringraf – Packly: Giuseppe Prioriello will share his company’s story, in particular regarding its proprietary web-to-print workflow, Packly, a complete online packaging solution for creating die-cuts, ordering 3D mock-ups and printing high-quality personalised packages. It is a perfect example of how integration, automation, web-to-print and digital finishing can take packaging businesses to the next level.

Conference sessions will be scheduled in the mornings. In the afternoons, visitors can attend the sessions and workshops they are interested in at the Xeikon Café Academy, which has a strong educational focus on technology and how to get the most out of what is available in the market today.