-to increase capacity with four unit Community SSC press

Rex Printing, a fast-growing company that has become one of the largest commercial book printers in its region, is installing a new Goss Community SSC press this summer in Quezon City in metropolitan Manila. The four-high press configuration features a 578 mm cut-off, two automatic zero-speed splicers and an SSC folder with quarterfold capabilities. The new press will give Rex Printing the ability to produce eight pages in full colour when running one web or 16 pages in spot colour running two webs at up to 35,000 copies per hour.

A subsidiary of the Rex Group, Rex Printing has affiliated publishing and book-selling businesses. “Technology is the backbone of our growth, and we appreciate the reputation and value of the GOSS brand,” commented Dominador D Buhain, executive vice president at Rex Printing, adding, “Over the years, we have invested in the best and most reliable printing equipment to print high-quality books and magazines that satisfy both domestic and international demands.”

Notably, more than 40,000 Goss Community SSC printing units are installed worldwide for a wide range of newspaper, book, magazine and advertising insert printing applications.

Based in South India’s buzzing print hub – Sivakasi (Tamil Nadu), Orient Industries has further strengthened their press segment by procuring a Heidelberg Speedmaster SM 52 single-colour press.

Enabling to handle paper thicknesses from 0.03 mm to 0.4 mm, the Speedmaster SM 52 is an economical solution for mid-segment printers with the largest sheet format being 370 × 520 mm (14.57 × 20.47 inches) and smallest being 105 × 145 mm (4.13 × 5.71 inches). “To us, Heidelberg means performance and quality. We have chosen the Speedmaster SM 52 as it perfectly fits for our requirement, running with a maximum speed of 15,000 sheets per hour which incredibly increases our productivity,” commented Muralidharan, son of N Vathsalan - the CEO of Orient Industries, adding, “This is our first Heidelberg press, and the service support from Heidelberg India has been excellent. We have the Polar cutter with us since a decade and have tasted Heidelberg India’s service standards before as well.”

Being in the print business since 1967, the company has been catering to commercial market segment and is a sister concern of the ‘Orient Unicorn Group’ which is one of the leading book publishers in Sivakasi. Around sixty percent of the jobs of this forty-year old firm revolve around printing of playing-cards and the rest concern other commercial jobs such as books, diaries, calendars and so on. “In our initial days, we started with commercial print jobs concentrating on playing cards,” mentioned Muralidharan, adding, “Established by my grandfather NPSS Nataraja Nadar, Orient Industries was started as a partnership firm which was later taken over by my father. Now, we are running it successfully for the third generation, with a skilled staff of 150 individuals.” NV Giridharan and V Chandra Mouli take care of marketing and business development respectively.

“Printing industry is growing at a fast pace, and we have to constantly implement strategies to remain ahead. Book publishing being a growing market in India and overseas, we plan to gear up our production facility to target this segment,” said Chandra Mouli talking about their future plans.

Kodak has recently installed India’s first in-house Flexcel NX system at Parakh Agro Industries Limited’s plastics packaging division, headquartered in Pune, enabling to produce premium quality food-grade flexible packaging materials.

The company has invested in the Kodak Flexcel NX system, including the Trendsetter NX mid imager, Flexcel NX laminator, Prinergy powerpack workflow with DigiCap NX screening capability along with complete plate exposing and inline plate processing equipment. “Kodak Packaging solution technology is extremely versatile and user friendly, apart from being easily upgradeable, and we wanted our print quality to be of the highest standard. From our past experience, we have seen the Kodak Prinergy workflow running successfully in several offset prepress bureaus in India, so it is a tried and tested solution,” commented Prakash Parakh, managing director of Parakh Agro Industries Limited.

“Higher ink transfer is one of the main concerns in wide web flexography, we at Parakh evaluated the DigiCap NX screening for its capability and were surprised to see the improved results. The high densities for solvent based inks will enable us to give the required results and further help improve speed and productivity, which will be a vital factor for our immediate expansion plans with high quality printing machines,” said Vinay Nalawade, director (Parakh Agro-Plastics & Flexibles). “The important factors today are decreasing job lengths and frequent job changes. The Kodak packaging solutions being fast, secure, automated and efficient can help us gain a competitive edge in this respect, with saving on time and enhancing the final product quality,” added Harshal Parakh, director, Parakh Agro.

“Kodak is happy to partner with Parakh Agro, one of the packaging industry’s emerging flexible packaging companies, having major expansion plans, especially in the flexible packaging sector, with specialty films for specialty products. We have equipped them with the Flexcel NX system, a key enabler for a converter to match the quality of gravure, to achieve the targeted quality standards,” said Suhas Kulkarni, national business manager, packaging segment, Graphic Communications Group, Kodak India Private Limited.

Right in time for the busy year-end production season in 2010, the first ROLAND InlineFoiler Prindor in Southeast Asia starts up in Jakarta. Fascinated by the possibilities that the cold foil enhancement process offers, president commissioner Welly Bolung decided in favour of manroland once again. A six-colour ROLAND 700 HiPrint with coating module, extended delivery, and a ROLAND InlineFoiler Prindor supplements the machinery at Indonesia Printer where some manroland presses are already installed. The company is regarded as a technology leader and creative trailblazer in Indonesia.

“We have always invested in the latest technology. With the ROLAND InlineFoiler Prindor, we are able to further improve the quality of our existing product portfolio and also open up completely new markets. This benefits us and our customers in equal measure,” commented Welly Bolung about the added value the new printing system provides.

In order to promote the new technology in advance, Indonesia Printer organized a large symposium in Jakarta at the end of July. This involved having the company’s new brochure enhanced with the ROLAND InlineFoiler Prindor in the Print Technology Center in Offenbach and then finished in Indonesia for the symposium. The core business of Indonesia Printer is made up of calendars, brochures, annual reports, books and high-quality magazines, as well as office supplies and stationery. The company also plans to add packaging printing to its range of services.

Reliable service support and high press productivity main factors for third successive installation at Silvassa. One of the largest manufacturers of folding cartons in India, TCPL Packaging Limited has recently installed a new R700 HiPrint from manroland at their Silvassa printing facility. This is the third manroland R700 installation at TCPL’s Silvassa plant catering to superior grade packaging jobs, which represents a strong testimony of TCPL Packaging’s confidence in manroland sheetfed technology.

The R700 for TCPL Packaging is a six-colour sheetfed offset press with coater loaded with several new value added features such as TelePresence that permits fast remote diagnosis when service is needed with individualized, condition-oriented press maintenance. Additionally, the press is equipped with Low Coverage Stabilization that aids in smoother ink travel by helping the flow of excess ink back into the roller train making it highly suitable for print forms with low ink consumption; QuickChange Job reducing the skill level of an operator for standardized operation which means that it automatically adjusts the height of the gripper bars in the infeed drum and transferters as per the substrate thickness; QuickChange Color, a self learning software controlling ink slides that automatically takes into account the manual ink slide corrections for previously printed jobs; QuickStart, a new patented pre-inking system, enabling saleable copies to be produced after only a few cylinder revolutions, even with small area coverages. The machine also has a ColorPilot D, a new ink regulation device that enables fast measuring of print control strips with very high accuracy levels and with online colour correction at the press of a button.

Being a loyal manroland sheetfed customer since 2001, TCPL Packaging decided in favour of a manroland press again owing to the proven superior performance of the R700 HiPrint press from manroland. The packaging major has been extremely satisfied with manroland’s reliable service and technical support with swift response time and the consistently high productivity levels of the press.

Formerly known as Twenty-First Century Printers Ltd, TCPL Packaging Ltd is promoted by the Kanoria family, and began commercial production in April 1990. It is one of India’s largest manufacturers of printed folding cartons, one of the few listed packaging companies in India and an ISO 9001, ISO 22000, BRC and FSC certified plant. One of the largest exporters of printed cartons from India, TCPL presently operates out of its four manufacturing units, three at Silvassa and the fourth at Haridwar. The company is regularly catering to consumers in overseas countries also such as the UK, Netherlands, UAE, etc.

“We are delighted about TCPL Packaging’s acquiring a new R700 manroland press. The latest installation validates the company’s trust in manroland’s sheetfed technology and reliable service support. In line with our efforts to achieve higher customer satisfaction levels, we have exclusively established a new service point at Silvassa to offer faster response to our customers in the western district,” commented Raj Nargis, managing director, manroland India.

Taking it further with its CtP installations, Heidelberg India recently installed Suprasetter CtP (28”x40”) along with Raptor PRO 85T processor at Don Bosco Institute (Bosco Society for Printing & Graphic Training) in New Delhi.

Don Bosco is a well known training institute imparting education in various fields of printing technology. The addition of state-of-the-art equipment shall facilitate them to benefit the student community who can prove to be efficient CtP machine operators within the industry.

Don Bosco who has a well equipped printing department having printing machines from Heidelberg and HMT, shall take advantage from this installation apart from offering plates to other printers as well.

Druckerei Kern, a commercial printer based in Germany has streamlined their production utilising the world’s first Speedmaster CX 102 five-colour press from Heidelberg with coating unit since mid-May 2010. “We have always invested in the latest presses in order to offer our customers optimum products,” stated André Kern, managing director of the company, adding, “We were impressed by the Speedmaster CX 102 right from the outset and the complete investment package has enabled us to make great strides in our industrial production.”

The package consists of the Speedmaster CX 102, Speedmaster SM 52, and Prinect components for networking. The Speedmaster CX 102 has been successfully tried and tested, with Druckerei Kern reporting far shorter makeready times, only half the waste, stable production speeds, quiet, smooth sheet travel, and extremely high net speed. “We were amazed by the clear boost in quality for high grammages and coating jobs,” said Kern.

Lying between the Speedmaster SM 102/CD 102 and the Speedmaster XL 105, the Speedmaster CX 102 from Heidelberg is said to be the ideal press for every customer. As a new market segment in the 70 x 100 cm (27.56 x 39.37 in) format, the CX 102 comes just at the right time for large numbers of customers, offering an interesting alternative for many printers who are impressed with XL technology but do not have the quantity of jobs needed to make full use of such a productive press, particularly as it enables them to work with the same plate format. So far, almost thirty presses have been sold, with buyers including commercial and packaging printers. One in three Speedmaster CX 102 units is equipped with Prinect Inpress Control, which significantly cuts waste and therefore makes a major contribution to ensuring eco-friendly production.

Also, customer demonstrations on a Speedmaster CX 102 six-colour press with coating unit have been underway at the Print Media Center (PMC) in Wiesloch-Walldorf since May this year.

-to enable the new levels of productivity in high-volume commercial printing

Being on the next quantum leap in commercial printing in XXL, Germany-based Weiss-Druck has recently ordered a 96-page Lithoman S from manroland.

Scheduled to be installed in 2011, the first 96-page Lithoman S in long grain with a web width of 2,860 millimeters would enable new levels of productivity in high-volume commercial printing. From 0 to 4.32 million pages per hour is the acceleration at which Weiss-Druck will start into the future. With this investment, the printing company advances to print-run volumes that until now were reserved for gravure printing. A well-prepared leap in performance: more than ninety percent of the presses worldwide with a web width of over two meters have been developed and constructed by manroland. The 2.86 meters web width will set a new benchmark.

A customer of manroland since 1994, Weiss-Druck is a family-owned business in its fourth generation, with approximately 1,400 employees in thirty companies (pre-press, printing companies, and publishing houses) at locations in both the eastern and western parts of Germany. All pre-press operations and printing companies are connected by state-of-the-art technology. “With this investment, our company continues its strategy of early investments in innovative technologies. The close cooperation with manroland primarily benefits our customers, as the 96-page Lithoman S allows us to keep offering the highest degree of quality, flexibility and effectiveness,” commented managing director Georg Weiss.

“Many people in the industry think that the installation of 80- and 96-page web presses on the market will result in further consolidations among printing companies. Observers should make a distinction when considering the topic of surplus capacities in webfed and sheetfed offset. In a recession, there is a decreased demand for print products, thus increasing the pricing pressure. manroland views itself as an opinion and technology leader in the printing industry, and the excellent performance of the German printing companies clearly gives them a leading-edge status. Who else is in a position to advance development if not manroland together with its customers? The accompanying cost reductions also allow print products to stay positioned as an attractive and efficient medium of communication,” stated Peter Kuisle, vice president for webfed sales at manroland, commenting on the general outlook in the industry.