KBA Celebrates 25th Comet Newspaper Press In Spain

The 25th KBA Comet web press has just been installed with a textbook start at new customer Recoprint, a few kilometres from Mateu Cromo, on the outskirts of the Spanish capital Madrid.

The 25th KBA Comet web press has just been installed with a textbook start at new customer Recoprint, a few kilometres from Mateu Cromo, on the outskirts of the Spanish capital Madrid.

Exploiting the ideal distribution of its locations across the whole country, the focus of production is on numerous daily newspapers and advertisers published by the company itself.

The most important titles are Marca, with 2.4 million readers the most popular Spanish daily, as well as Expansion, Diario Medico, Gaceta Universitaria, Correo Farmac?utico and Correo Medico.

Mateu Cromo in Pinto just missed out on the honour of receiving the silver jubilee press, despite having similarly extended its print capacity with a second large-scale KBA Comet installation in 2004.

Since 1988, Recoprint has belonged to the Grupo Recoletos, one of the top five on the Spanish print and media scene.

Alongside Pinto, it operates four other print centres in Spain and on the Canary Islands, namely in Dos Hermana (Seville), Sagunto (Valencia), Rabade (Lugo) and Guimar (Tenerife).

Like many Spanish newspaper printers, Recoprint also boosts the utilisation of its presses by printing part editions for a variety of other national and international newspapers.

The flexible concept of the single-width, double-circumference KBA Comet supports this strategy perfectly, said KBA.

The Recoletos print centres are able to take on contract work for the Financial Times, Daily Mirror, Daily Record, Independent, Daily Mail, Pueblo de Albacete and Estadio Deportivo.

Recoprint Pinto has invested considerable sums in buildings, pre-press equipment and machinery for the print and mailroom sections, in order to be able to win both new readers and new advertising and contract print customers on the basis of flexible production facilities and quick turnarounds.

Recoprint general director Antonio Calderon Diaz said: "The KBA Comet was just the right press to match our specifications.

Its universal full-colour capabilities, format flexibility and short make-ready times, not to mention the high production outputs and low waste rate, were decisive points in its favour, as we immediately noticed for ourselves during our visits to existing Comet users in Aragon, Bilbao and Mallorca." He added that the Comet was bought, as it is able to print an average 240,000 copies, or approximately 45% of the total Marca circulation at a high quality level.

When the need arises, it can also take care of all the other newspaper products, which are currently still printed on three other presses in Pinto, he commented.

"It has already replaced two old presses and has increased both our productivity and production reliability," said Diaz.

Vicente Pedrueza Vinegra, plant director at the Pinto location said: "The Comet was delivered in April, and then installed and commissioned by mid-August.

Training for the operators was arranged during the installation phase and was completed as smoothly as the press start-up itself.

With our Comet we possess a flexible and versatile means of production which integrates seamlessly into a workflow with our CTP pre-press and mailroom." The company said it has a plate capacity of 450 plates per hour to serve the four newspaper presses it operates and it can use the Comet as a back-up press for other products in addition to its printing Marca.

"Make-ready on the Comet is extremely fast.

It is not our first shaftless newspaper press, but is certainly the one with the most convenient handling and the most impressive performance," commented Vinegra.

Recoprint's Comet, with a cut-off length of 578mm, is configured to produce 96 tabloid pages with up to 48 pages in full colour, or alternatively 64 four-colour tabloid pages in collect mode.

The web width can be varied between 635mm and 870mm, with 840mm as the standard width.

The high pagination and colour capabilities result from the ability to print either 4/4 or 2/2 and 1/1 in one four-high tower.

The Comet at Recoprint in Pinto comprises four full four-high towers of H-type printing units with automatic ink supplies, six Megtec AR75 reel stands with KBA Patras M reel transport systems, a folder superstructure with two formers and an insertion deck, and a KF 3 jaw folder with quarterfold facilities.

The press is controlled from three EAE consoles with production scheduling and presetting system, RIP interface and diagnostics PC.

The eight-page Comet is more strongly represented in Spain than in any other country, said KBA.

It has proven especially attractive for smaller and medium-size newspaper printers in that country added the company.

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