中文Speciality print leaders from five Southern European countries will meet in Porto next month for the eleventh FESPA Southern European Congress, held on 11 and 12 November at the HF Ipanema Porto. The event is organised jointly by five FESPA member associations — FESPA France, FESPA Italia, FESPA España, APIGRAF in Portugal and the FESPA Hellas Association in Greece — and its purpose is narrower and more practical than a trade show’s.
The congress exists so that printers in neighbouring markets can benchmark their strategies against peers operating under similar conditions. That sounds modest. It is actually rare. Most industry events aggregate a global audience and therefore default to themes general enough to offend nobody. A regional congress can put a Portuguese converter, an Italian screen printer and a Greek signage business in the same room and let them compare notes on customer expectations, workforce shortages, investment plans and new technology in markets that share a currency, a regulatory environment and, increasingly, a labour problem.
The expected audience reflects that: owners, chief executives, senior managers, suppliers and technology leaders from screen, digital, textile and signage printing. Paulo Dourado, director of communications at APIGRAF, made the case for hosting in Portugal by acknowledging the shared problem set directly. Portugal, he said, is proud to host the congress in Porto, and the markets involved face many of the same challenges — from AI and sustainability to finding skilled people — and are ultimately stronger when those challenges are discussed and tackled together.
The programme is built around that premise rather than around product launches. The first day opens with a speed networking session that pairs print companies, suppliers and associations for structured introductions, a format designed to produce specific conversations rather than the circulating Room of business cards. That is followed by a comprehensive market overview titled Big Picture: The Southern European Printing Industry, which is the closest thing the congress has to a shared factual baseline.
The second day shifts to practice. Business leaders from across the five associations will present examples of how their companies are adapting, under the heading Innovation best practices. This is the part of the agenda that tends to generate the most value, because it is where a converter hears another converter describe a decision — a press investment, a workflow change, a new service line — with real numbers attached rather than a vendor’s projection.
Sustainability gets dedicated attention later in the day, led by Graeme Richardson-Locke, FESPA’s head of associations and technical lead. That timing is sensible. Sustainability has moved past the stage of being a separate agenda item in most printing businesses and into the stage where it is a specification requirement imposed by brand-owner customers, a reporting obligation, and a cost line. The questions that matter now are technical: which substrates, which energy sources, which waste streams, which certifications, and what each actually costs per square metre.
The congress closes with visits to three companies in the print, graphic arts and textile sectors — a decision that puts the theory against real plants. Plant visits are where abstract benchmarking becomes concrete: how a competitor lays out a finishing department, what software sits between estimating and the press, how many people run a shift.
There is institutional history behind the format. The Southern European Congress was launched in 2015 by the associations in France, Italy and Spain to strengthen ties between neighbouring markets. Portugal’s APIGRAF joined soon afterwards, and the Greek association followed in 2023, extending the event’s reach to five countries. Eleven editions in, the congress has outlasted the trade-show cycle that has consumed several larger events, largely because it costs less to run and answers a question its members actually ask.
Registration is open for print service providers and industry stakeholders via the APIGRAF congress portal. For a Southern European printer weighing whether to attend, the honest calculation is this: two days, a short flight, and the chance to compare notes with four neighbouring markets on the three problems that will define the next five years. That is a better return than most conference programmes offer.
The congress’s structure reveals what its organisers believe is scarce. Speed networking comes first because introductions are the hardest part to manufacture. A market overview comes second because most printers have a clear view of their own order book and no view at all of the market they are trading in. Best-practice presentations come third because peer evidence carries more weight than vendor claims. Sustainability comes fourth because it is now a specification issue rather than a values issue. And plant visits come last, because the useful arguments happen when people are standing on a factory floor looking at somebody else’s layout.
Regional gatherings of this kind are also becoming more important as the large international trade shows consolidate. A European printer who cannot justify the cost of a trip to a major exhibition can usually justify two days in a neighbouring country, and the conversations available there are more specific to their market conditions. Five countries with a shared currency, shared regulation and increasingly shared labour shortages is a sensible unit for benchmarking, and eleven editions in, the format has proved it can survive without spectacle.
Source: FESPA — https://www.fespa.com/en/news-media/fespa-southern-european-congress-2026-ai-sustainability-focus-in-porto
