drupa 2024, the most important industry trade fair for us, came to a successful close on 7 June. Driven by the overall success of the trade fair, the IST was also able to return home with a more than satisfactory final result. Our 50 colleagues worked hard to achieve this and diligently presented our latest innovations and a contemporary company image to the more than 8,000 visitors to our stand, which covered more than 400 square metres. Contract conclusions and promising future prospects included.
Due to the great demand and direct visitor response, it quickly became clear, as expected, that our innovation trio, consisting of SMARTcure, FREEcure and UV Analyzer, captured the trends of the time and also hit the key points in terms of expectations. IST has demonstrated a keen sense for the requirements of the market, which currently still demands the interplay of digital and analogue technologies. Another notable factor was that the packaging industry is still on the rise, and we see great potential here for our patented FREEcure system, whose approach of dispensing with photoinitiators was very well received.
This was clearly illustrated during our 35 print demonstrations, in which we demonstrated live three times a day how a modern printing process runs on the Heidelberg Speedmaster and achieves the desired result using UV and LED-UV technology. In this case, the result was a print job for Haribo, which we will donate to children's hospitals and kindergartens as previously announced. Using the Heidelberg Speedmaster CX 104, we demonstrated how versatile a printing process can be. We presented a multi-colour, highly finished packaging print with impressive coating effects as well as a classic 4c commercial print, which is hardened with the latest LED UV technology for immediate further processing. The centrepiece of these demonstrations was the print job for the German brand Haribo, for which the LED UV ink Saphira was used.
Because our experience and expertise were already centred around the next generation of UV curing, we also revamped our corporate image. Visitors could therefore look forward to the IST trade fair presentation under the motto "more than UV".
