An interactive business card with a flexible display, a "speaking" package or a board game with a printed battery and glowing OLEDs – the possibilities and fields of application for printed electronics are manifold. Logistics benefits particularly from RFID chips that store data and relay them via contactless readers to a central system and thus help to monitor the goods chain and combat product piracy. The huge potential for printed electronics will in fact only become truly apparent when its use makes economic and practical sense not only on the outer package, but also on the individual product. And strong growth is in the offing for intelligent packages that combine such elements as sensors, batteries, displays, logistics and RFID.The possibilities are manifold, the potential vast and the market is rapidly growing: Frost & Sullivan’s study entitled "Impact of 2020 Megatrends on Chemicals" sees organic electronics as a megatrend. The growing importance of the sector is additionally demonstrated by a report from Markets and Markets which forecasts an over 100 per cent increase in sales of organic and printed electronics to about USD 25 billion by 2015.
Messe Düsseldorf is responding to this trend and, in cooperation with ESMA (European Screen Printing Manufacturers Association), has developed the PEPSO – Printed Electronic Products and Solutions events strategy. The theme is being promoted at a joint stand at relevant Düsseldorf trade fairs – like interpack 2014, the world's most important fair for the packaging sector and allied process industry. PEPSO was premiered at the print media fair drupa 2012, followed by the medical technology fair COMPAMED 2013, the rubber and plastics fair K 2013 and Euroshop 2014.
The PEPSO Pavilion at interpack 2014 is bringing the following companies and institutions together: ThinFilm Electronics (Norway), Printed Electronics Ltd. (UK), Printcolor (Germany), Fraunhofer Institute for Modular Solid State Technology (Germany) and cooperation partner ESMA. Visitors to the exhibition centre who want to be shown the latest innovations in printed electronics will find the trade fair locations of all the companies conducting research or manufacturing in this sector in the Printed Electronics Products Roadmap.
