Horizon Radio

Hot Minute Ep. 9 - Finishing First 2025 with Captain Timm Edelhoff

• Horizon International

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Adrienne Culley:

Konnichiwa, and welcome to Hot Minute, everyone. I'm your host, Adrienne Culley. Hot Minute is the official podcast of The Horizon Group, designed to give you all the latest information on Horizon, our solutions and industry trends, we hope you enjoy. And now let's get into today's episode. Today I am joined by Timm Edelhoff, the Managing Director of Horizon GmbH. So Ahoy, Captain Timm and welcome to Hot Minute.

Timm Edelhoff:

Ah, ahoy and hello everyone!

Adrienne Culley:

Today we are here to bring everyone an episode on Horizon GmbH's upcoming event on September 24 and 25th... Finishing First. It is happening so soon now.

Timm Edelhoff:

Yes! Only around three weeks to go, but it's promised to be extremely popular event. So we have already more than 220 registrations, so more than 30 partners, and expect more than 300 guests in total this year. I guess last year, no last year was no Finishing First, but last Finishing First, in 2023 we had around 170 people, and the year before in 2022 around 130 so I think this is a strong sign for Horizon as a main player in our industry.

Adrienne Culley:

I am very excited to welcome all of our partners, our distributors, and our customers into the Horizon GmbH office and European headquarters. I think it's going to be such a wonderful event. Speaking of, we have so many good things planned, so why don't we just dive right in and start with the basic information. So where, when, who and what. Also, for a bonus at the end, please tell us about the maritime theme that we are going with this year.

Timm Edelhoff:

Yeah, so this time Finishing First takes place in September, 24 and 25th as you said, and again in Quickborn. This is close to Hamburg in the northern part of Germany. Yeah. We always, always expect our showroom to be big enough, but this time, I think it will break all records. So we will have more guests, more partners, and more solutions this year. The event is becoming more and more international, and we are preparing for that. Also, colleagues from Japan will support the event, as well as our Horizon distributors and our valued partners, and of course, most important are our customers. As maybe many people know, you (Adrienne) and Bryan, from Horizon International, will also join this event, and this will be great and a big benefit for the show as well. Speaking about the theme, the theme should underline our proximity to Hamburg, and it's Harbor and the maritime flair. As you know, we try every year to find a theme, and this year, the motto, or the theme, is our maritime theme, we decided, and I liked this idea from our marketing from the very beginning.

Adrienne Culley:

Yes, Bryan and I are thrilled to be able to join this event this year. We are really excited, and it's also given us a great opportunity to collaborate between Horizon International and Horizon GmbH. And the maritime theme as well, I got a special tour last time I was in Germany from Timm-San around Hamburg and the port and everything. It's so beautiful. So, I love that we were able to tie in the cultural aspects as well as the incredible finishing equipment. So I'm really looking forward to that as well. Please share with us some of the key solutions that are going to be at the event. I know we will have the BBS-56 Book Block Making System, which is a great highlight. What else are we going to feature?

Timm Edelhoff:

Yeah, sure. So the highlights will be definitely the new generation of the BBS-56 Book Block Making machine. Also, we will show the Mark V saddle stitcher with a high speed sheet feeder connected with the latest model of the palamides and Hunkeler and a smart folding system together with Tecnau. We will also show a folding machine inline with the rotative die cutting machine. So that's the AFV-566, with the RD-4055, and, of course, the binder BQ-300 together with the HOF-400 feeded by a robot arm. And another highlight will be the direct and live connection to Japan to show a new product from Horizon. But I don't want to tell too much at this moment, but it will be definitely, really interesting. What I missed to tell is that we show different logistics solutions like AGVs, AMRs. I mean, the self driving cars and robot arms, for example, a new palletizing robot we are going to show on Finishing First. And additionally, we will show a complete workflow process, from impositioning until finishing, and of course, iCE LiNK and some partners will be involved in this process.

Adrienne Culley:

Yes, so we are really bringing our customers, our distributors, our partners, everyone, the full range end-to-end solutions and then just a bunch of variety. So inline solutions, nearline solutions, standalone solutions, and then, of course, all of the extra things that go with the solutions, the workflow, the robotics, the pre-press, the post-post-press, all different kinds of things that a customer may need to complete their work. So I think it's going to be just an incredible display of equipment. I absolutely cannot wait for the show and the plan. We are so appreciative of the German team, because it sounds like they have really gone out of their way to make sure that the visitors are going to have just such a fantastic experience. Speaking of we are missing one group of people with our show that we haven't spoken about yet, which is our partners. So post-press is our specialty, and that's wonderful, but we also need the pre-press, the press and the post-post-press. So what do we have on board for partners?

Timm Edelhoff:

Yeah. So my strong belief is that we really need a strong network in our industry to find the best solutions for our customers, and only with a partnership and collaborations with all of these partners from all aspects of print and print finishing, we can, I think, cover the whole value chain. And I do not only mean the paper process, but also the software process from start until the finished product. And this is becoming more and more important for a profitable and smooth process and in the end, a profitable company. So therefore, we have more than 30 strong partners in our showroom. It's maybe a little bit difficult to name them now, but we would show them all during the event. And this is also, unfortunately, we had to cancel some additional inquiries from, yeah, from other partners. We had to refuse because of the limited space. Now, this is really annoying, but shows the huge interest of partners to be a part of the Finishing First event.

Adrienne Culley:

Yes, it's wonderful to have the huge interest. And it also shows that if you can't, for some reason, find the correct solution for you at the show, we also have a more extended network, even outside of the show, to reach out to. So it's really wonderful to be able to be open and connect with our partners and collaborate with them. It's a huge advantage of Horizon and Horizon equipment, I think. So I'm really looking forward to see the collaborations at the show. Okay, so at this point in the podcast, I think we have convinced everyone to come to Finishing First with us. So if you're looking to register, please, number one, contact your local Horizon representative or support staff. And if you're not sure who that is, don't worry, because you can go to our website and click on our sales network to find your local contact, and they will definitely be able to help you. Or you can head on over to the Horizon GmbH website and register on your own and notify your local contact afterwards. All of these links will be included in the description of this episode. So Timm-San, do you have anything else to say?

Timm Edelhoff:

Yes, just make sure you can come to Finishing First and see the future of print and print finishing. So yeah. But I also, I would like to express, a big thanks to all involved persons for the great planning and make this event a really, really great event. So see you all in few weeks. I'm really looking forward to see you in Quickborn, Germany.

Adrienne Culley:

Yes, I will echo the huge thank you to both our team, our customers, for coordinating their schedules and travel, our partners, our distributors, everyone that will come to Finishing First. Thank you so much. And also thank you to our network who is supporting us from at home. We are really looking forward to seeing all of our attendees and each other the team, very soon. And to our audience, don't worry if you can't make it. We will share many photos and videos from the event for you to see online, including system walkthroughs, set up photos, photos of us having fun, and of course, we hope to see you there in the future. So that is all we have for today. Everyone, please remember to stay happy, stay healthy, register for the event, and Finishing First with Horizon this fall. Bye!

Timm Edelhoff:

Thank you. Bye!!

Adrienne Culley:

Arigatou Gozaimashita, thank you for tuning in to today's episode of Hot Minute. If you have any questions or topic requests, please send us an email. We are always looking for new ideas, and until next time, stay happy, stay healthy and finish first with Horizon. Bye!