The members of the Initiative Online Print e.V. (IOP) met for the 11th Annual General Meeting on 22 and 23 September 2018 in Wiesbaden. The most important item on the agenda was the board elections. Bernd Zipper (zipcon consulting GmbH) was unanimously elected as chairman and his two deputies Willi Soll (Print Planet GmbH) and Thomas Masselink (BWH GmbH) were confirmed in office.32 member companies currently belong to the IOP, which together achieve a sales volume of approx. 4.3 billion euros (excluding the bvdm individual companies). The IOP is the only association of online printers worldwide – with members from the D/A/CH region and some international players – that represents the constantly growing online print industry as a mouthpiece to the outside world. The next members’ meeting is planned for spring 2019.
This year, for the second time, the Initiative Onlineprint e.V. association sponsored the Druck & Medien Awards (DMA) and presented the coveted “IOP Award” to the most innovative online printer on 25 October 2018 in Berlin. The five finalists in the category, Erler + Pless from Hamburg, Longo Deutschland from Augsburg, Ortmaier Druck from Frontenhausen, Picanova from Cologne and Westermann Druck from Braunschweig, submitted their most interesting and innovative projects for evaluation by the DMA jury.
Longo’s “mymuesli” project convinced the 25-member jury and earned the company the coveted IOP Award as the most innovative online printer of the year. The other placings – silver went to Erler + Pless from Hamburg and bronze was awarded to Picanova GmbH. Longo developed its own software solution that retrieves data from an API of mymuesli and uses the information thus obtained to create the labels of the respective individual mixes. Not only is user-defined information such as the name of the muesli or a greeting text positioned on the label, but above all content information such as a nutritional value table, ingredient icons, allergens and other information is placed dynamically. The highlight here is that the muesli mix machine is controlled by a DataMatrix code on the label.
“We at the IOP are of course all the more pleased that two member companies made it into the top three. Above all, we congratulate Longo Germany for the award as the most innovative online printer of the year,” says Thomas Masselink, CEO BWH GmbH and deputy board member of the IOP.