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Printing Presses and Machinery (New and Used, Service and Repair)
News Release from: KBA | Subject: Cortina 6/2 press
Edited by the Printingtalk Editorial
Team on 09 March 2007
Reaffirming Future Of Waterless, Keyless
Printing
Waterless and keyless offset printing with the compact KBA Cortina press will remain a core focus for Koenig and Bauer.
Waterless and keyless offset printing with the compact KBA Cortina press, despite the many parallel innovations for conventional wet-offset newspaper printing, will remain a core focus for Koenig and Bauer That was one of the central messages to emerge from the first official get-together of the current KBA Cortina users from Germany, Belgium, Holland and Switzerland, which was held in Wurzburg (Germany)
This article was originally published on Printingtalk on 19 Jun 2007 at 8.00am (UK)
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With a claim of being able to print at 80,000 full-colour copies per hour (cph) a six-by-two KBA Cortina press line has been ordered by M DuMont Schauberg in Cologne (Germany).
KBA said that its clear commitment pulled the rug from under the speculation of a possible withdrawal from the waterless offset printing market.
The company said those rumours had been spread in some areas of the market following the presentation of the compact conventional-offset Commander CT press at the Ifra Expo newspaper industry exhibition last October.
However, KBA added that as practical evidence, the waterless pioneers of the newspaper branch attending the Cortina users meeting were given a demonstration of a prototype printing unit for a triple-width Cortina 6/2, which has been tested with good results over the past few weeks.
Further reading
Cambridge Newspapers Expands With KBA Performance
Cambridge Newspapers is planning to expand its newspaper contract printing with a pressroom investment in back to back colour facilities.
Dutch Printer Extends KBA Production Capacity
Dutch printing house Janssen Pers Rotatiedruk, a longstanding KBA customer based in Gennep, has ordered an extension to the single-width Continent web press it installed in 1999.
Belgian's Take To Waterless For Newspapers
Waterless newspaper offset has now spread to Belgium, where media player De Persgroep in Asse, near Brussels, has just become the third print enterprise to sign up for a KBA Cortina after Rodi Rotatie
Complementing the double-width Cortina, which has in the meantime been ordered by nine European printing houses and is already in daily production at seven locations, KBA said it intends to offer the Cortina 6/2 with an identically high level of automation, where a triple-width configuration is an interesting project option (for example, 48-page, 72-page or 96-page installations).
KBA believes the press will permit further savings in investment outlay, space and power consumption and it has already received the first serious enquiries regarding the compact Cortina jumbo machine.
The elimination of fan-out effects when printing without dampening units on the KBA Cortina 6/2 does away similarly with the need for a nine-cylinder satellite configuration, which KBA said is now typical for conventional triple-width offset presses with greater web widths.
The company added that the Cortina 6/2's design permits the four-high tower of the machine, including fully-automatic plate changing, as well as other automation modules, to be used also in 6/2 production up to a maximum web width of 2,100mm.
KBA explained that contrary to the current trend towards higher prices for conventional CTP printing plates, the guests in Wurzburg also learned that the new waterless CTP plate MX7 from Toray Industries is to be reduced in price by a greater or lesser amount, depending on the quantities ordered, for new contracts with deliveries commencing from 2008.
The price reductions promised by Toray Industries for new contracts result from the increased plate consumption for the seven on-stream Cortina installations in Europe, as well as being because of the declared intention to transfer the work-intensive and cost-intensive finishing (cutting and packaging) of its waterless plates for the European market from Japan to the Toray Textile Central Europe Czech facility (TTCE) in the summer.
Additional stocks are then to be maintained in the Czech Republic, satisfying the demands from the newspaper industry for security of supplies.
KBA marketing director, Klaus Schmidt, pointed out at the Cortina users meeting that, in addition to waterless pioneer Toray, two of the world's three leading manufacturers of plates for the newspaper industry are also showing an increased interest in the waterless offset process.
At Kodak, for example, the development of a waterless plate suitable for newspaper printing has been pursued for some time in cooperation with KBA and it is to be continued through to a marketable product.
And the service life of the waterless plates, claimed at more than 150,000 cylinder revolutions in newspaper printing and even more on semi-commercial coated papers, is similarly no longer a source of worry for the user, added KBA.
The discussion with the Cortina users illustrated that waterless coldset printing, with the millions of newspapers, supplements, magazines, community bulletins and other products that are being printed in high quality each week, has long since grown out of its pilot phase and is on its way to convincing even the more conservative people in the newspaper industry, said KBA.
The installations of further Cortina presses, such as at the Oggersheim print centre of the 'Rheinpfalz' newspaper house near Ludwigshafen (Germany) are set to add even greater momentum to this development, beleives KBA.
The company explained that, for instance, where many local editions are to be printed, or where additional work is planned, the fully-automatic plate changing of the Cortina press and the other automation modules - which are still far from commonplace on the market - are features that have an immediately positive effect on profitability.
KBA believes that the potential of the Cortina press, however, is by not exhausted with coldset applications, as Belgian media house De Persgroep and KBA will be demonstrating towards the end of March at an open house in the user's new Eco Print Centre in Lokeren to the north of Brussels.
For several weeks now, De Persgroep has been printing not only coldset newspapers but also, on one Cortina four-high tower, heatset semi-commercials on coated papers without any need for time-consuming ink changes.
That ability provides interesting new avenues for medium-sized and larger newspaper houses handling their own titles, as well as for contract printers, claimed KBA. Request a free brochure from KBA ...
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