FuturePrint Podcast
FuturePrint is dedicated to and passionate about the power of print technology to enable new opportunities and create new value. This pod features deep-dive discussions with the people behind the tech as well as market analysis, trends, marketing and storytelling!
FuturePrint Podcast
#245 Industrial Printing's Renaissance: FuturePrint Industrial Print at Munich's Motorworld Beckons a New Era
In this episode of the FuturePrint Podcast, Marcus Timson and Frazer Chesterman unveil an exciting new venture: FuturePrint Industrial Print, taking place on January 21–22, 2026 at Motorworld Munich.
Drawing from two decades of experience transforming the print industry – from building FESPA into a global brand to launching the influential InPrint event – Marcus and Frazer discuss why now is the perfect time to reimagine industrial print. Against a backdrop of supply chain disruption, skill shortages, and rising consumer demands, technology is not just a tool but a solution.
The conversation explores:
- Why Munich, and why Motorworld?
- How industrial printing has evolved over the past decade.
- Targeting manufacturers who are integrating print into production processes.
- Leveraging FuturePrint’s 25,000-strong community and digital engagement tools.
- Innovations in inkjet, software, AI, and sustainable materials reshaping the sector.
- The unique event format: efficient, engaging, and tailored to today’s business needs.
FuturePrint Industrial Print is more than an event—it’s a curated meeting place and community for innovators, manufacturers, and technology providers to shape the future of industrial manufacturing.
If you’re interested in attending, exhibiting, or participating in the event, get in touch by emailing marcus.timson@fmfuturenow.com or frazer.chesterman@fmfuturenow.com
👉 Learn more about FuturePrint Industrial Print
👉 Connect with Marcus Timson
👉 Connect with Frazer Chesterman
Save the date: January 21–22, 2026 Motorworld Munich
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FuturePrint TECH: Industrial Print: 21-22 January '26, Munich, Germany
Welcome to the FuturePrint podcast celebrating print technology and the people behind it.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the latest episode of the FuturePrint podcast. I'm happy to have with me my business partner, fraser Chesterman. It's a little bit of a different podcast. I'm interviewing my colleague at this very stage stage partly because we're at just at the beginning or early phases of launching future print industrial print, which is a new confect style event that's happening in a venue called motorworld in munich and it's happening 21st, 22nd of january. So I wanted to do to do given the fact we're doing something a little bit different and returning in many ways to a location that we've had a lot of success in the past. But I'll let Fraser talk a bit more about that as we go through the conversation. So, welcome to the Future Print Podcast, fraser.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you very much. I like the idea of being on the other side for once.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a bit interesting, isn't it? Yeah, so, fraser, give us a little bit of a background about Industrial Pimp, also Munich, and perhaps a bit of a reasoning as to why we are running this event in January in a completely new location, and so on.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thanks, marcus. I mean, actually, it might even go back a bit further than that. We now have been in this space, this print space, since, well, for me since 2003, for you sort of 2006. So we've been in it for kind of 20-odd years. As many of you know, we were at FESPA in the days when FESPA was predominantly screenprint and then shifted to digital and mainly wide format, and obviously, for the five, six years we were there, we turned that organisation from a small trade association above a shop to a kind of multi-million dollar euro pound business and took it around the world and we were super successful with that.
Speaker 3:And then Marcus and I left Vesper in 2011 and went off to launch a business with a partner company.
Speaker 3:Mac Brooks focused on some new ideas we had which, as many of you may know, first one was eco print, which amazingly still the story is is floating around but.
Speaker 3:But our major success was with imprint, which was an industrial print show, um, that we first ran in hanover in 2014 and uh, and then moved it to munich in 2015 and ran it in mun in Milan and in the US and had, you know, some real success there. We had, at its peak, nearly 200 exhibitors, probably about 4,500 visitors, and I think, if we were trying to sum up, what we'd got to with that, probably at its peak, was that we'd really captured the attention of the industrial inkjet market and also really managed to get an audience that was, you know, kind of interested in in what inkjet could do in manufacturing, uh, and and so we, you know, by by 2018, when we actually were forced to sell the show, which was a real shame, but we were forced to sell it. It was probably, you know, it was at its peak and we were very much involved in the space in the market. Yeah, so there you go, marcus. Did you want to add anything to that? Because, you know, obviously the tourists did it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess I'd say that it was a stage where we spent quite a bit of time defining with our partners not just us, but what industrial print is and, as you said, industrial Inkjet was starting to become robust and strong enough and fast enough and with enough reproduction quality and so on to work in lots of different new exciting industrial areas such as automotive and decor and so on. And also, as well as the industrial inkjet, screen printing too is still, and was back then, a key technology for that segment. So I guess it's kind of printing that is functional or decorative, and print in that perhaps is with where the core product wasn't the print, so it's part of the process of manufacturing. So it's very different, very different to or or any of the other events that perhaps people typically visit. So we did something different.
Speaker 2:There's a lot around development as well, wasn't it? New market ideas, new techs, new thing, new opportunities, and I guess, um, it remains really important. But, um, perhaps the landscape's changed a bit, isn't it the event landscape for a variety of reasons. Covid got in the way, etc. Etc. And we relinquished our ownership of in print, but, um, I guess munich in january part of the reason we're doing that is to not re-establish an old product, but to create something new.
Speaker 3:Uh yeah, where it is now really isn't it. It's it's kind of um, you know, we had that great image that we used at the house with the kind of different things in the house that industrial ink or print generally could be used to, to as part of the manufacturing process and that that's evolved um, and I guess we're we're keen to to tell that story of the evolution of, uh, industrial and print in industrial and tell you where that's gone and where it is and, and you know, undoubtedly germany, munich, particularly that area, that region is really strong, and you know, undoubtedly germany, munich, particularly that area, that region, is really strong. Still, you know there are some high-tech manufacturing aspects, uh, that really we want to pick up on. Um, I would say the one defining thing that I think is really crucial in terms of what we want to achieve is going back to finding the people that are looking at these projects or that are looking at this technology, whether it be, as you said, it could be, anything from electronic security, it could be in coating.
Speaker 2:A bit more about the audience Fraser, where they're coming from, what industries, what locations, etc.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think it's really crucial on this one that we look at that, because actually, the evolution of the market means what we were very successful at doing with Imprint was going through the kind of literally data of manufacturers in particularly in Germany, but also in that sort of DAC region, and identifying potential prospects that might be sort of servicing the automotive market, servicing the white goods market and targeting those kinds of people, because for us, that's so.
Speaker 3:That's the key to this. You know, what we don't want to do is what you see at IPI and, to be honest, you know what we see at our own events is that you get a lot of the kind of, you know, the manufacturers, the OEMs, talking to each other there. We want to try and go back to what we were doing really successfully with imprint, which is actually addressing people that are looking at using print in their manufacturing process, and that's the key to this, yeah, at using print in their manufacturing process, and that's the key to this. Um, yeah, and marcus, in a way, it's going to be down to you and the marketing guys and you know, eleanor, and and and how you work on that, uh, and also so explain a bit more about what you've got in mind in the way we can attract that kind of uh visitor yeah, I guess.
Speaker 2:I guess the um it's kind of leveraging a little bit of what we're aware of with the, with the location and, like you say, leveraging the bavarian um. The strong points of the location and the, the industries that are strong in that region is the whole supply chain and community there obviously automotive, I think, biomedical strong too. I think there's some um great opportunities to, to focus. That's why munich's so good, I think. Let's be honest, the best of the events we ran were in munich. It's the best place for it. Um, we're fortunate, eleanor's um a fluent german speaker, so we're able to, you know, I think, do a lot in german language as well as as english and um. You know, grassroots aren't really build a database, spend the time um focusing on who do we want there, what kind of person, how are we going to reach them? Different, different way of doing it, perhaps to then uh. You know a conference in the uk is is a more of an industrial uh event in germany. So it requires a different approach, different cultural marketing methods, I suppose um, but that that's, that's something we're going to plan in. We've got a development meeting. We're working with a lot of our partners, as always, because I think there's it's huge value in designing something collaboratively. I think we've got a fantastic venue.
Speaker 2:Um, motor world in munich is quite unique, quite different. We've got a whole hall with over a thousand square meters, the coal bunker with lots of different areas that we can really showcase tech. We can still have conference content, we have a networking area with exhibits, we can have an application area, so. So I think it's a great event for somebody to attend, really as a conference, to come for a single day, achieve a lot. You don't have to sit down in a traditional conference setting and listen to all the talks. You can spend time networking and doing other things too.
Speaker 2:So I think the event format is is not, it is going to be cool and a little bit different, and the venues are 20 minutes from the airport for those that fly in close to the alliance arena, the bay of munich ground. So it's, it's, it's, you know, a very known area, um, so yeah, I, I don't know it's. I think it's going to be a an exciting event and also it's going to be an exciting event and also is going to perhaps fill a gap, isn't it? That's the point, isn't it? As well as anything else is that. Let's be honest. The imprint show doesn't appear to be there anymore.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and a couple of things that are probably worth knowing. One of the things you know, future Print as an organisation. We've got a 25,000 people community, so we've got quite a big reach. We know, through the last few years we've used podcasts like this, we've used video, we've used live webinars. We've used webinars to really pull audience towards us, and one of the things we're going to use to do that specifically around this topic will be, within the autumn period, run a couple of live webinars on topic.
Speaker 3:So perhaps on the automotive topic, the white goods topic, the print electronics topic, and really what that does we we know this from doing these events is that we find that people register for them. You know it's easy because you can register um to to come to a webinar without having to go anywhere, and then all of a sudden, they're much more in our, in our kind of vision, if that makes sense for us to get them to attend the event and they start to understand what future print is about, what we do, how we do it and how relevant this event will be for them. And and just to add one other thing to that is you know we do want this event to showcase technology. So we have a technology and applications demo area and we've already got a number of companies who are going to bring machinery with them, as well as companies who have already confirmed that they want to be there at this event. Um, you know that who will be able to showcase what, what they do and how they work in the industrial application market?
Speaker 2:yep, absolutely, and and I think, um, yeah, it's different ways of looking at the tone of the world. Like we've just had an event in valencia, haven't we? And we had a successful three days FuturePrint week, and we had a day focused on leadership, a summit, and the theme of that was leading in a VUCA world. Are we a bit mad to be launching a new event during this kind of like period of uncertainty and volatility? What's your thinking there?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, firstly, it's not completely fresh, is it? You know we've done this before. We know this market well, we're in the space. You know, I'm not just saying this. I don't think there's anyone out there that doesn't know that it's kind of a digital marketing platform, that it's a marketing platform that knows this space as well as we do. You know, it's what we do every day. It's the industrial space, industrial print space, that we operate in. We're not in the broader print market. So this is our world.
Speaker 3:Clearly, talking to people, they still are selling technology into those manufacturing markets and they want to continue to do that and they're evolving their products.
Speaker 3:So, you know, whether it be a machine or an ink or a substrate or whatever, this continues to be an exciting and interesting marketplace, and that's what we want to do is we want to give a showcase for the market to come together and to look at what's going on, and so, yeah, that's the way we see it and, as you said and we've said, munich was always very successful for us.
Speaker 3:So it is quite a fun location we're using, with a history of automotive, because obviously it has what it has, which is a lot of really interesting cars and motorbikes there, so people will know, or know of it. So, yeah, you know, I think this will be like a mini festival. It will be great. We're really looking forward to doing it, and it's in a time which is clear. There's nothing else running at that time. It'll be the beginning of the year, so it'll be an opportunity for companies to really show what they're about for 2026. As we said, we're going to use the autumn period of 2025 to really ramp up the story around this, and I think it's going to be a really exciting place to be when we get there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and just sort of following on from that, really, I think one of the things I've observed, perhaps in the decades since we've ran it's around a decade, isn't it? Munich, 2015, not quite, but nearly um, we've become even more connected, haven't we? And also the process of manufacturing. There's an increasing intensity around manufacturers needing connectivity and joined up manufacturing processes, but also, within that, agility and adaptability. And I think, regardless of the VUCA world and the turbulence, actually technology is perceived to be the answer to that, both skill shortages, supply chain challenges, fast changing consumer demand and all of that. People need manufacturers, need technology to help them solve those product problems.
Speaker 2:Ai is now a mainstream thing and wasn't 10 years ago, so it's like there's a, there's a, there's a sea change we saw a trooper as well. That software's suddenly like equal in terms of relevance into as on the show floor. Um, and I think that's that's because we're learning much more about how all of the facets of industrial printing are so important. There's been advances in curing technology. There's been advances in ink chemistry. There's a huge amount of weight behind water-based and loads of innovation and loads of innovation.
Speaker 3:That's the thing. This technology is being used in lots of innovative ways. So that's why this market never stops. That's why it's no good to say, well, you did this before and therefore it's the same as it was. No, it continues to change, it continues to evolve and this is an evolution of that industrial print story. So we hope you will join us there 21st, 22nd of January 2026. And if you're interested, then get in contact with Marcus and myself and on the show notes, I know Marcus will put in our contact details and we would love to talk to you either about a session in the showcase, a little stand bringing a piece of technology, coming as a visitor.
Speaker 2:We hope to see you thanks for joining us, fraser, on your own podcast, but you know I mean anyway, yeah, I hope to see you guys and everybody else in munich in january for what will be the event for Industrial Print.
Speaker 3:Thank you very much.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, you can subscribe now for more great audio content. Coming up and visit futureprinttech for the latest news, partner interviews, in-depth industry research and to catch up on content from Future Print events. We'll see you next time on the Future Print podcast.
