3 KBA Six-Wide Commanders For Belgian Newspapers

Le Soir, one of Belgium's leading newspapers, is to be printed along with a number of other publications on three six-wide KBA Commander presses.

Le Soir, one of Belgium's leading newspapers, is to be printed along with a number of other publications on three six-wide KBA Commander presses.

Following Tamedia in Zurich and Espace Media Groupe in Bern and Imprimerie Rossel in Brussels, the newspaper division of Belgian media group Rossel et Cie, has become the third printing house to place an order for the new press said KBA.

Comprising nine towers of nine-cylinder satellites, nine reel stands and three jaw folders, the 6/2 Commander will be installed in 2005 in a printing plant soon to be built on a four-hectare site in the new Portes de l'Europe (Gateway to Europe) industrial zone in north Nivelles.

Jacques Valembois, technical director at Rossel, said: "We opted for the 6/2 configuration because it offers us a laundry list of economic benefits for our specific circulation size and copy structure.

A single tower can print 24 full-colour broadsheet pages, and on top of this it takes up less space, costs less, consumes less energy and can be operated by a smaller crew than a conventional 4/2 press." Apart from cutting the cost of expanding production capacity and colour impositions, the 6/2 Commander would give the company much greater flexibility by supporting a wide choice of layout options and the inline production of supplements, he added.

"The press design, with continuous lock-up slots, minigap cylinders, automatic roller locks and pneumatic lock-ups for the blankets and blankets plates offered a lot of compelling arguments, both from the technology point of view and for ease of operation, make-ready and maintenance," commented Valembois.

For Le Soir the new press signals the completion of a transition from the Nordic to the smaller, more reader-friendly Berliner format said KBA.

At present the copies are trimmed down to the Rhine format by a trimmer located between the press and the mailroom.

Rossel et Cie, whose newspapers and weeklies are currently printed in Brussels, Charleroi and Liege, recently set up a new subsidiary, Rossel Printing, at the Portes de l'Europe premises.

Rossel Printing will have around 160 employees and an annual sales target of 40m Euros.

The new Commanders will print more than 400,000 newspapers per night.

Their daytime job will be printing weekly titles with a total circulation of more than three million copies.

The three 6/2 Commander presses for Brussels will be erected on a concrete sub-structure.

They will have a cylinder circumference of 940mm (37"), a maximum web width of 1,920mm (75.5") and a rated output of 90,000 copies per hour (cph) in straight production.

The press package basically comprises nine KBA Pastomat RC automatic reel stands, KBA Patras automatic reel handling and butt-end removal.

There will be nine towers of nine-cylinder satellites for 4/4 on 24 broadsheet pages, 72 couples with film inking units and spray dampeners, minigaps on the blanket cylinders, automated roller locks, continuous lock-ups slots and high-speed pneumatic plate clamps.

In addition, there will be seven double turner bars, three cantilevered folder superstructures with four formers on two levels.

The lower assembly will have three formers side by side, whilst the upper one with one former will have provision for two more and there will be three KF 7 jaw folders with a 2+2:7:7 cylinder ratio.

The presses will feature automatic wash-ups for the blanket and impression cylinders, web aligners, cut-off register controls and ink pumping.

KBA said that they will have advanced console technology with ABB's MPS Production job scheduling and press preset system plus RIP interface.

Provision has also been made for the addition of ribbon and sections stitchers at a later date.

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