GERMANY - Surface design has an increasing importance for interior fitting, furniture, flooring and related industries, as the demand for individual and premium surfaces is steadily growing. Innovative manufacturers and users of the industry now want to offer solutions for this by launching the Digital Printing Association (DIPA).

The founding members of the new association are: the Homag Group, the world's leading provider of integrated solutions for production in woodworking industry and woodworking shops; Group MB Digitalprint GmbH & Co. KG, user and producer of digitally printed surfaces for furniture manufacturing and interior fitting; Li&Co AG, user and producer of digitally printed flooring; Durst Phototechnik AG, leading manufacturer of digital printing systems and Adler-Werk Lackfabrik Johann Berghofer GmbH & Co KG, leading Austrian paint supplier, offering primers and topcoats for digitally printed surfaces.

The main goal of DIPA is to make digital printing as an innovative process available to manufacturers of the above-mentioned industries. Ali Özyilmaz, Managing Director of MB Digitalprint noted, “We want to show users the many possibilities digital printing is offering today and provide them the necessary knowledge.”

The new association unites experts of all process steps of industrial surface design by using digital printing with companies that already use this technology successfully. The technology partners want to provide access to digital printing to companies that deal with surface design.

Philipp Henry, responsible for digital printing in the Business Unit Surface Processing at Homag explains, “Regardless of the printing process DIPA considers the process of individual surface design holistically. Thereby DIPA is the right organization for all matters relating to digital printing.”

In the long term it is planned to transfer DIPA into a registered association. As a non-profit organization, it is intended to be open to all interested companies - subject to all preliminary legal reviews.

On July 11, 2019, the DIPA will host a symposium in Brixen/South Tirol (Italy), where interested parties can learn more about the successful use of digital printing. Further information about DIPA is available at www.dipa-surface.com.