Event Overview

The ink on your packaging is now a data decision.

For decades, digital print for packaging was a technology choice. You adopted it when the economics made sense. You ran short runs when a customer needed them. You explored personalisation when a brand wanted to experiment.

That's changed.

PPWR conformity declarations are mandatory from August 2026. The EU’s Digital Product Passport will require a unique, machine-readable data point on every regulated product. Retailers are piloting QR codes that link physical packaging to live supply chain data. Deposit return schemes need serialised codes at production-line speed. Recycling compliance depends partly on which inks and coatings are on the substrate.

Every one of these obligations has a print decision at its centre. And most supply chains haven’t thought that through yet.

Smithers Printed Packaging Summit is the event where that conversation happens. Not a technology showcase. Not a vendor exhibition. A one-day working conference in Cologne where brand owners, converters, equipment suppliers, and data specialists get in a room, with an afternoon in a live digital product passport facility, and start building answers.

If you’ve been part of Digital Print for Packaging Europe over the years: this is its natural evolution. The print is still central. The context around it has transformed.

• It starts from the compliance obligation, not the technology. PPWR, DPP, and retailer QR mandates are the brief. Print and data are the tools
• The afternoon site visit to Osapien, Cologne gives delegates hands-on access to a live digital product passport facility, the only conference in Europe to offer this
• Sessions are built around contested questions, not polished presentations. We want honest case studies, real production data, and speakers who are willing to say what went wrong
• Brand owners are at the centre of the programme, not the periphery. Their supply chain questions set the agenda
• It builds on eleven years of Digital Print for Packaging Europe, the most established community in this space, while opening the door to the broader audience that the new agenda demands.

"DPP is the conference connecting all players in digital printing, from developers to brand owners."
Nestlé

"Useful for networking and discovering hot topics, suppliers and brand owner visions."
L'Oréal