Sustainable newspaper production is a theme for many of the 21 speakers taking part in this year’s WAN-Ifra World Printers Summit.

The event – October 11-13 in Frankfurt – has evolved with more of the things which have made it attractive to industry specialists in the past. With 17 sponsor partners named and a dozen of the speakers drawn from newspapers in Germany and around the world, WPF director Ingi Olafsson promises half the programme devoted to meetings and half to conference. 

With this year’s theme ‘sustainable business partnerships’, the event at Literatur House now serves as the annual meeting point for the newspaper print community, addressing print-related questions and bringing together production, technical, and procurement executives, together with suppliers and equipment manufacturers.

“Every director is thinking about working in more sustainable ways, while increasing utility and materials costs have added pressure to adopt sustainable practices,” says Olafsson. He promises an event to provide knowledge, know-how and a network to confront the upcoming challenges.

Speakers from all over the world include Times of India chief operating officer Mohit Jain, DMG Media group paper director Rick Stunt from the UK, and Globe and Mail print operations vice president Sally Pirri from Canada.

They join a European contingent which includes Max Garrido, managing director of multi-site Spanish newspaper printer Bermont, production and strategic procurement chief Andreas Gierth and FAZ digital products publisher Carsten Knop – both from Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung – and Christian Siebert, managing director of Funke Medien in Hamburg and publisher of a number of group newspapers, as well as founding managing director of the new Funke One business and innovation unit.

Visiting from Belgium are Coldset Printing Partners manging director Paul Huybrechts, and Mediahuis chief operating officer Paul Verwilt.

Among a number of sustainability specialists are Bild Media’s Christin Keil and Christoph Migotsch, who is sustainability, maintenance and procurement chief at SV Zeitungsdruck, as well as Almut Reichart, a scientist at the German Environment Agency, consultant Benoît Moreau, who is a specialist in the carbon footprint evaluation of printed matter at Ecograf in France.

More details here. GXpress is a media partner.