Large Format Rapidas Make Quality Mark In Portugal

With an investment in two five-colour KBA Rapida 162a presses Portuguesa Industria Grafica Lda is continuing its 10-year partnership with Koenig and Bauer.

With an investment in two five-colour KBA Rapida 162a presses for the 120cm x 162cm format, large-format sheetfed offset specialists Portuguesa Industria Grafica Lda in Rio de Mouro near Lisbon is continuing its 10-year partnership with Koenig and Bauer.

Portuguesa is one of five printing facilities belonging to the Arvato Print Iberica Group, which is responsible within the global Bertelsmann organisation in the Spanish and Portuguese markets.

Over 700,000 books leave the company's modern premises every month.

Utilising a 12,000 square metre production area, the company handles not only four-colour hard-cover and paperback books for leading European publishers in Germany, England, France, the Benelux countries and Scandinavia but also numerous magazines, brochures, catalogues and other commercial work.

Pointing to its EN ISO 9001/14001 certification, the company places high demands on its production facilities and its over 200 employees as its tackles constantly increasing market challenges.

Managing director Carlos Neves said: "We are all aware of how much the image and success of a company is dependent on the discipline and creativity applied to every last detail.

Printer Portuguesa offers its many customers comprehensive services from a modern CTP pre-press, via professional large-format and medium-format print, to a range of individual finishing options.

Our guiding principles are maximum quality and absolute deadline reliability.

Our leading role in the Portuguese market is the result of a continuous process of improvement".

He continued: "The many awards which we have received confirm the success of our business strategy.

Our efforts have been rewarded with several prizes for our books, magazines and catalogues.

We see that as a challenge to further increase our performance.

One example of our response is the purchasing of the two large-format KBA Rapida 162a presses.

After all, the print department remains a core element in the overall process." He added that the company regarded KBA as the leading manufacturer on the world market.

"The reliability and performance parameters of first new Rapida 162a, which has been running multiple shifts since the beginning of 2004, soon convinced us.

And so at Drupa, we signed the contracts for a second press of this same series, which will be coming into service around the end of the year.

This will give yet another significant boost to the potential of our print department, which now counts seven sheetfed offset presses," commented Neves.

Production director Jose Vicente, the new man in charge of technical matters at Printer Portuguesa added: "You just cannot compare the earlier Planeta Varimat 48 and Varimat 28 with the latest large-format models from KBA.

The new presses play in a completely different league with regard to ease of operation, make-ready times and production output.

I can thus fully support my predecessor's decision to purchase the Rapida 162a.

Our productivity has risen by around 30 per cent since the first Rapida 162a came into service.

It is used above all for book-printing work and stands out with fast make-readies, high production speeds and a constant quality level." He went on: "Following their intensive training by KBA, our young team was soon able to make practical use of all the possibilities and innovations offered by the Rapida 162a.

We are able to complete a full job change-over in just 26 minutes.

The design of the relatively short inking units serves to keep ink viscosity constant and thereby optimises its flow characteristics.

The quickly attained ink and water balance too, makes a very positive contribution to process stability and ultimate quality in production.

Even though the press itself is designed for outputs up to 13,000 sheets per hour, we restrict ourselves to speeds of around 10,500 sheets per hour in the interest of absolutely maximum print quality." And Carlos Neves concluded: "The investments in the two KBA Rapida 162a presses were epoch-making decisions.

Over time, we will also be replacing our remaining two-colour and four-colour Planeta Varimats with the latest KBA large-format presses.

But first, we want to modernise the finishing department for our hard-cover and paper-back books.

After all, every single production department is important in an optimised workflow.".

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