International toymaker Ravensburger deploys Heidelberg Speedmaster technology

Ravensburger AG is one of the world’s leading producers of board and card games, toys, jigsaw puzzles, and children’s books. Sheetfed offset printing is used in the competence center for print production at the company’s site in Ravensburg. Paper grades, formats, and the ink sequence are largely standardized. A Speedmaster XL 106-5+L from Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG (Heidelberg) – a five-color system with coating unit – was taken into operation in summer 2021. An extended sheet format of 76 x 106 centimeters (standard format: 75 x 106 centimeters) means utilization of the printable sheet area can be optimized when producing multiple-ups.

Ravensburger carried out an extensive test run before taking the decision to invest in a sheetfed offset press from Heidelberg. The Speedmaster XL 106 in the Heidelberg demonstration center at the Wiesloch-Walldorf site had to prove how efficiently it could produce the customer’s print jobs using the same consumables as in Ravensburg. “The high demands we placed on the technology in terms of paper waste and net output were met in full,” confirms company’s Head of Production, Tobias Liebing, who is particularly impressed by how reliably the press runs, even with relatively thin printing materials.

The outstanding results of the test run were borne out in practice. Six months on from commissioning, Liebing reports the technical availability of the press is 99.4 percent. “This printing system has well and truly won us over,” he says.