Bio to follow.
Douglas Bugner received his B.S. in Chemistry from The Ohio State University and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from UCLA. He has over 35 years of experience at Eastman Kodak Company researching, developing and commercializing inks and coatings for both electrophotography and inkjet printing systems. Since 2006, he has led the advanced development and commercialization of the pigmented inks and co-optimized paper and film treatments for Kodak’s high-speed continuous inkjet presses. He is currently Director, Materials R&D, Digital Print, Eastman Kodak Company. He holds 69 U.S. Patents and has authored over 50 scientific publications.
Pete has worked in the print industry all of his career. His background has foundations in R&D working on many different technologies and applications – always in contactless and digital printing. Pete’s profession has transitioned through technical and customer support into sales and business leadership, working with customers in applications from desktop printing to 5-metre-wide digital presses and through the evolution of single pass digital printing. It is the fast-evolving technical challenges and the disruptive influence of digital print on the industry that has maintained his interest in ink and coatings technology. Pete holds a Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry and a Master’s degree in Business Administration and is responsible for Sun Chemical’s Digital business globally.
Gregory has worked in the packaging industry for over 20 years in a range of roles and companies from design to engineering and converters to FMCG. In recent years, he managed a number of key projects at Coca-Cola, including Share a Coke, bow label, the all-new Fanta spiral bottle, and others.
A passionate advocate of digital print for consumer and business problem solution Gregory has delivered commercial launches ranging from hundreds of units to the hundreds of millions of units.
Gregory joined AB InBev in 2018 as a global packaging innovation director working out of the global technical centre in Leuven, Belgium, where he is responsible for primary packaging innovation technology developments.
Over the course of his career, Jochen Drösel has held managerial sales positions in family-run companies such as the Kolb Group and in international groups such as Smurfit Kappa. He began his career in 1992 as a Regional Sales Manager for Bong Deutschland in Wuppertal. While working there, he completed his studies in business administration (VWA). In 1998, he joined Kappa Recycled Paper Europe in the Dutch city of Roermond as a Regional Sales Manager for the DACH countries (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) and the Czech Republic. After the merger to become the Smurfit Kappa Group in 2004, he became the Managing Director of the new sales company Smurfit Kappa Paper Sales Germany in Neuss. During this time, he was directly responsible for the top key accounts, including that of Schumacher Packaging. From 2012 onwards, he worked as Sales Manager and Member of the Executive Board at the Kolb Group/Hans Kolb Wellpappe in Memmingen.
Kerry Drake has 30 plus years in the Creative Consumer Products Packaging and Point of Purchase Display industry. For the past 19 years has been delivering technology products to both packaging and consumer products companies that offer traditional design tools to non-designers.
Ted Samotis, HP WW Director of Corrugated GTM for the PageWide Industrial business, has been involved in the graphic packaging industry for over twenty years, and he is a passionate innovator and leader in the digital transformation of the corrugated industry.
Prior to joining HP, Ted lead the formation and growth of Georgia-Pacific’s Hummingbird digital packaging arm in North America. Hummingbird was the first in North America to install a T400S and T1100 for corrugated pre-print application.
Ted has extensive experience in the graphic packaging and display industry having served in diverse roles from supervisor to Vice President and General Manager with multiple organizations, including Chesapeake Corporation, Menasha Packaging, and Georgia-Pacific.
Prior to joining the business community, Ted served as an officer in the U.S. Army upon his graduation from the U.S. Military Academy, at West Point.
Ted and his wife, Suzette, reside in Erlanger, KY where they raised their five children.
- Thomas Lorenz started in 1991 at KURZ as Application Engineer for applications in plastic industry, with global responsibility.
- 1998 changing position to Export Department as Area Sales Manager and taking care for different markets and some specific projects.
- 2019 joining our DIGITAL METAL® Team for taking care for sales of or systems in Europe and the Americas.
20+ years developing Digital Printing markets, technologies, applications & solutions. Currently at Mark Andy, Inc. Vice President, Marketing & Business Development for Digital Solutions. Previously worked at Indigo which became part of the Hewlett-Packard Company, 1997 – 2012. Prior to Indigo, held marketing positions at paper manufacturing and converting firms: Fort James Corporation and Sweetheart Cup.
Professional Certification: CPIM, American Production & Inventory Control Society
Degree: BS Business Operations Management, University of Delaware.
Navy Veteran: Submarines
Clive Ayling is a recognised veteran in the industrial inkjet industry having spent more than 20 years leading the development and delivery of a wide variety of digital printing implementations. In 2005, he co-founded Meteor and became Managing Director in 2016 upon Meteor’s acquisition by Global Graphics plc. Prior to Meteor, Mr Ayling spent much of his career as a consultant with the Technology Partnership and before this as an R&D engineer for Schlumberger Industries. He has a degree in Physics from Cambridge University.
Ben has worked in the corrugated industry for over fifteen years, the past five years have been spent in the research and execution of a successful industrialised single pass aqueous digital printer project. Now he works for Domino selling and educating customers as to how to make the technology that Domino offers work within their existing businesses, and also how to generate new markets from the technology.
As a member of the Esko corporate marketing team, Jan De Roeck (°1966) leads a team of marketeers developing outbound messaging and content, manages industry relationships and coordinates market research activities.
With his parents running a local print business, Jan was literally raised amidst ink, paper and printing presses. He holds a bachelor degree in printing and pre-press, and a specialization in graphic design. He complemented his graphic arts education with an Advanced Management Program at the Ghent-Leuven Vlerick Business School in 2007.
Jan began his career in 1989 in the customer services department at Barco, a Belgian technology group at the basis of what Esko is today. Through various product management and product marketing assignments, Jan developed a particular interest, acumen and expertise in prepress solutions for packaging and label production. Jan is highly respected and trusted for his insight in the graphic arts industry and his level of understanding of customer workflows and market requirements. He is a frequently asked speaker and moderator at various international industry events and trade conferences and represents Esko in various trade associations.
Coming soon
Amelia’s been at the forefront of the commercialisation of one of the most impactful wine packaging innovations in two centuries. Starting as business development executive less than three years ago, she’s now commercial director for Garçon Wines – the inventors of eco, flat wine bottles and sustainable wine packaging solutions.
Søren Ringbo has been with Nilpeter A/S for more than two decades. Since 2000 as General Manager for Digital Products division. In this role, he is responsible for Nilpeter worldwide business unit related to digital printing products. Nilpeter is a leading global manufacturer of label and narrow-web printing machinery, based on flexo, offset and InkJet technologies.
Søren is responsible for the strategy and implementation of digital print technologies. Architect and project owner of various digital print applications like Nilpeter DL330, Nilpeter CASLON and Nilpeter PANORAMA. Wide experience in different digital print technologies. Worked closely with Xeikon, HP Indigo, FFEI and Screen GP on various projects.
Juan is an accomplished and highly experienced leader in the flexible packaging industry, with a proven track record in business development, product marketing and accelerated sales growth of innovative packaging and printing equipment. Juan Cano has recently been appointed as Director Business Development to lead Screen’s newly created flexible packaging inkjet printing division.
Screen’s inkjet digital printing technology builds on over 75 years’ experience in engineering of innovative printing solutions for the packaging industry. The new Truepress PAC 830F responds to the growing demand for technology that allows cost-effective printing of short runs at lower production cost than conventional analogue printing systems (Flexo, Gravure or Offset) and a faster time-to-market.
With more than 20 years’ experience in delivering sales growth globally, Juan Cano worked in several Senior positions at Bobst before joining SCREEN. Previously, he has held several other sales & marketing roles helping to shape and develop the global markets for state-of-the-art capital equipment manufacturers.
He graduated in Chemistry at the University of Granada and holds an MBA from the Oxford Brookes University.
Paul has worked in the information technology industry for over 30 years for Fujitsu-ICL, IBM and now Konica Minolta. He specialise in market analysis, user-centric design, business innovation and with a side-line interest in how brands work. Today he works within the Business Innovation Centre Europe, a prototyping and new product commercialisation function within Konica Minolta. His current project focus is on understanding what hidden value lies in packaging and labelling information which can be brought to life through digital technology.
Mikhail has more than 10 years international experience working in the machinery manufacturing industry for the packaging market in different sales and marketing roles. Currently he is a part of Koenig & Bauer Group focused on digital print for packaging applications.
Michael Miller has worked in digital printing for 24 years and is the manager for Digital Decoration at Ball Corporation, the world’s leading manufacturer of metal beverage packaging. Prior to joining Ball, Michael held roles at IBM and Ricoh, serving as worldwide digital printing support and leading the worldwide technical support and service planning groups in the high-speed production paper arena. Michael’s focus at Ball is to lead the technological effort to marry digital decoration with metal beverage packaging.