Product category:
Newspapers and Periodicals Printers and Publishers
News Release from: KBA | Subject: Commander press
Edited by the Printingtalk Editorial
Team on 12 January 2006
KBA Commander Press Handles German Daily
Tabloids
Kreiszeitung Verlagsgesellschaft's two-section, nine-cylinder satellite KBA Commander press line handles contract work for the Axel Springer publishing house (Hamburg).
Kreiszeitung Verlagsgesellschaft's two-section, nine-cylinder satellite KBA Commander press line handles contract work for the Axel Springer publishing house (Hamburg) Three editions of the national tabloid daily Bild-Zeitung are printed every day, with a joint circulation of 320,000 copies
This article was originally published on Printingtalk on 18 May 2004 at 8.00am (UK)
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Springer specifies a production window of just four hours per night for its printers.
That is why the Kreiszeitung management team, headed by managing director Ernst-Jurgen Wenske and technical manager Horst Stuckenschmidt, was geared to a mature and reliable press concept, so that the company is prepared for all eventualities.
All technical risks are excluded, both in the press hall and in the mailroom, ensuring proper completion of the high-volume, quick turn-around orders, said KBA.
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Just 12 months after construction began on Rossel Printing's new plant, two of a total of three KBA Commander 6/2 press sections began production of Belgian national daily newspaper Le Soir.
The new KBA press line in the Kreiszeitung Verlagsgesellschaft plant near Bremen (Germany) has five nine-cylinder satellite towers.
It is engineered with a 570mm cut-off and a maximum web width of 1,600mm for full four-colour production at speeds up to 85,000 copies per hour (cph) straight.
Together with the company's new production centre, it forms the core of an overall investment project that has cost 22 million Euros.
The Kreiszeitung publishing group already had a KBA Anilox-Colora that was installed in 1998-1999, which prints the 13 local editions of its Kreiszeitung, as well as numerous weekly and Sunday titles, with a total circulation of 350,000 copies.
The company's managing director, Ernst-Jurgen Wenske, said: "We have enjoyed a very good relationship with KBA for some years now.
The excellent service support we received on the Colora has been matched on the new Commander, too.
With this investment in modern technology, we have further strengthened our competitiveness on the national newspaper printing market." Technical manager Horst Stuckenschmidt added: "The Bild-Zeitung is printed in Nordic format, and so we needed to invest in a new press line and new mailroom equipment to be able to handle the orders from Springer and to meet our side of the long-term cooperation deal.
There are also high demand profiles to be satisfied concerning colour content, quality and print output.
It was for this reason, alongside the extremely positive experience with the installation of the Anilox-Colora a few years ago, that we again chose print technology from KBA.
The Commander is a uncomplicated and reliable high-performance press, which has already proved its qualities worldwide." He said that the nine-cylinder satellite concept can be characterised by its high registration accuracy, which embodies all the prerequisites for high-quality full-colour printing in large formats.
"Guided by the given copy thickness of the Springer products, we chose two KBA Commander sections with two and three nine-cylinder satellite towers, which would then be able to produce newspapers with 32 paged and 48 pages.
The highly automated press line also permits one tower of the second section to be switched over to the first section, as a further means to maximise production flexibility.
And of course, corresponding expansions are possible at any time, if and when the need arises," continued Stuckenschmidt.
Output, functionality, reliability and economic efficiency were also the decisive criteria in the mailroom, he continued.
The press and the downstream equipment had to integrate seamlessly at production speeds up to 85,000cph and had to exclude all elements of risk.
Stuckenschmidt said: "After all, we have at most four hours to handle a night's jobs.
We start up the parallel production at 10.00 pm-10.30 p.m.
and 12.30 a.m.
and we must provide a guarantee that nothing will hinder the meticulous distribution schedules of Bild-Zeitung.
The customer does leave us a little leeway, but we cannot afford any longer delays." He added: "The copy streams delivered from the two KBA KF 5 jaw folders are each taken off and transported to the mailroom by dual conveyor systems.
The line from the first Commander section also runs via an inserting machine with three supplement stations, enabling us to add supplements to individual parts of the production, where necessary." Horst Stuckenschmidt described the overall project as a great success: "The assembly time and commissioning phase for the Commander were pleasantly short, enabling us to gain a lead of over six weeks on our original planning.
We were able to agree with Springer that the buffer should be used for test production for individual editions.
During that time, we not only optimised the software of the various press line components, but also offered our press crews an intensive programme of training on the job parallel to the installation.
The press and the mailroom have been producing reliably and without problems from the very beginning." Founded in 1860, the Kreiszeitung daily has developed from a small regional newspaper into a powerful print medium.
With a daily circulation of over 90,000 copies, it is the fifth-largest daily newspaper in the state of Lower Saxony. Request a free brochure from KBA ...
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