KBA Gears Up To Serve Emerging Columbian Market

The KBA office in Columbia is to be managed by Christian Piwek and his team.

The KBA office in Columbia is to be managed by Christian Piwek and his team.

As the new managing director of KBA de Colombia, Christian Piwek is now to establish the KBA office in Bogota and will be contributing his knowledge of the web and sheetfed offset business to the benefit of the company's Columbian customers.

After four years as sales and service manager at KBA-Brasil in Sao Paulo, Christian Piwek has now returned to his home city Bogota to take up a new challenge.

The focus of his initial work will be placed on establishing an efficiently organised sales and service centre, as a basis for a stronger KBA presence on this important South American market and for more intensive contact between KBA customers in Columbia and the production facilities in Germany, said the company.

At the same time, project development and commissioning for new web and sheetfed presses from Wurzburg, Frankenthal und Radebeul will also figure, added KBA.

The Columbian print industry is recording encouraging successes as the comprehensive political changes in the country take effect, believes KBA.

KBA users, such as Panamericana or D'Vinni, with its three Compacta 215 web installations and two Rapida 162 large-format sheetfed presses, respectively, have advanced to become market leaders and have given considerable boost to the reputation of modern KBA presses in Latin America.

Both users are in the meantime also receiving orders from the neighbouring countries and even from overseas.

Catalogues, brochures, labels, direct mailing products, books and magazines are typical examples of the products printed using KBA technology.

With the new office, KBA believes it is now even better able to offer both existing and potential customers in Columbia a full range of services, from initial investment advice through to expert support in all matters concerning press installations, maintenance and upgrades.

Christian Piwek was educated at the local German School in Bogota (Colegio Andino) and went on to study electrical engineering at the University of Kaiserslautern in Germany.

In 1996, he joined KBA at its Frankenthal facility as an installation engineer for the company's Compacta presses.

Since then, he has supervised the installation and commissioning of practically all the commercial web presses to go in to South America.

Following up his position as installation management assistant in Frankenthal, he was later delegated to Brazil to serve as sales and service manager.

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