KBA Performa machines have found their customers even in the centre of Slovakia. After installation of a two-colour machine in Zilina and two of the four-colour machines in Martin, the KOPRINT printshop in Banska Bystrica set up for production, a new five-colour KBA Performa 66-5 printing machine in December of this year.

The KBA-Grafitec Company organized the International Dealers' Meeting on 1st and 2nd December. The work presentations and the negotiations of the International Dealers' Meeting were held in the Company's seat in Dobruška with the social part of the meeting for the Sales Representatives taking place in the Havel hotel in Rychnov nad Kneznou. During this event, a press conference for the management representatives and the professional press was held.

The Electrografica Company, a long term partner and distributor of KBA-Grafitec, held on 11th November 2005, an open house in the Diebo state printshop in the town of La Plata. In this manner, the company could celebrate the quick and smooth installation of the KBA–Performa 74-5 SRB2 format printing machine and also once again open the activities leading towards the return of KBA-Grafitec to the Argentina market after many years of economic instability.

One of the most beautiful Hungarian towns where the traditional past meets the industrial future is the location for the SPORI PRINT V company, founded in 1991. Consisting of twenty employees, this printshop is the main print supplier for the Japanese car company Suzuki, located close to the printshop. Prints for Suzuki subcontractors and for the Esztergom town authority form a substantial part of the printshop production.

The KBA-Grafitec company has noted on the Czech market that there has been an increased interest in their Performa printing machines in both format lines since the EmbaxPrint exhibition in May. The demand from the Czech printshops for the Performa 74 in the SRB2 format and also for the Performa 66 in the SRA2 format has been increasing. The smaller of the format lines tends to be favoured by the small and medium size companies mainly for such reasons as the optimal relation of the price, efficiency and the quality. A good example of the effective use of the KBA-Grafitec small-format printing machines is in the printshop of Mr. Petr Chrt from Újezd nad Lesy. This company has been printing with the KBA-Performa 66-4 since the middle of October.

The FGP Studio printshop in Olomouc is known for their focus on Dobruška printing machines. They have enlarged their printing capacity by purchasing the five-colour KBA Performa 74-5 at the end of October/beginning of November. The new printing machine is the first one in the SRB2 format to be used by the printshop.

Third-quarter figures for German press manufacturer Koenig & Bauer AG (KBA) showed a 25.9% increase in group order intake to €1,309.9m (2004: €1,040.1m). Group sales totalled €1,107.3m, 17.2% above the prior-year figure of €944.5m, and the order backlog was 15% higher, at €1,095.6m. As a result KBA has moved back into the black for the first time this year, with a pre-tax profit (EBT) of €10.1m. Its operating profit of €17.3m is a big improvement on the figure of €1.2m for the first six months. Net profit was €5.2m, equivalent to net earnings per share of 32 cents. Management reaffirmed the projected sales target of €1.5bn for 2005 and a higher pre-tax profit than last year’s €15.9m.

In the middle of October, the KBA Performa 74 sheet- fed offset press was installed in the Poznan based company, Polygrafie Fabisiak. The new “blue” series was only put on sale a few months ago and the press, for which the purchase contract was signed at the Polygrafia exhibition in Poznan, has replaced a veteran two colour press, which also came from the Dobruška Company.

The new German owner of the domestic manufacturer of the KBA-Grafitec printing machines from Dobruška is making an investment into both manufacturing and information technology.

New slants on small- and half-format sheetfed offset. KBA Radebeul is already well-known to medium- and large-format printers all over the world as a leading address for modern technologies and innovative solutions in sheetfed offset print. The open house “Hot Technologies for Small Format Professionals” on 6th and 7th October, on the other hand, was conceived to tempt small format users to pay a first visit to KBA's sheetfed offset facility.

The PolygrafInter 2005 fair will be taking place for already the 20th time at the new Moscow exhibition centre KrokusExpo from 10th to 16th October. The Koenig & Bauer Group is to be represented by its Moscow subsidiary KBA RUS, whose 325 m² stand in Hall 1 will be offering live demonstrations of a small-format KBA Genius 52 and a half-format KBA Rapida 74.

Focus on small and half-format solutions The KBA group is to be represented at Printexpo 2005 in Budapest from 11th to 14th October through a joint stand of its Hungarian agency Prosystem-Print Kft. and the KBA-Grafitec agency Reprota Kft. ( Hall A, Stand 206 D/E ). The focus of the fair offerings is to be placed on solutions for small and half-format print with a KBA Performa 66, a Genius 52 and the digital sheetfed offset press 46 Karat.

KBA-Grafitec organized two open days, on the 14th and the 15th of September, for the prospective customers of the chemistry free CTP technology. The Valeur printshop in Dunajska Streda together with the Grafitec Slovakia Company (the representative of KBA-Grafitec for Slovakia) hosted the first of the open houses that took place on 14.09.2005. The printshop bought the CTP Presstek, model 425 Excel complete with the four colour printing machine KBA Performa 66, in June. A day later a similar event took a place in Wadowice in Poland, in the Grafikon printshop. The company purchased in the town of Poznan, during the spring exhibition, a five colour printing machine in the SRB2 format that originated in Dobruška and this was completed with the CTP Presstek Dimension 400. Both machines were installed in June and therefore the employees of the printshop could present and share their experience with potential clients after only 3 months of operating the machine.

On the final day of Print 05 in Chicago, KBA North America looks back on a string of contracts for new and established products, with more projects pending.

The Print Show Bucharest, which is held every two years at the Romexpo exhibition centre in Bucharest, Rumania, will be opening its doors to a predominantly Rumanian trade public from 21st to 24th September 2005. The KBA Group is represented at the country's most important printing fair on the stand of its Rumanian sales and service partner SIKO-ROMANIA srl (stand 008). Only a few steps away, the local agents for subsidiary KBA-Grafitec, Normandia srl (stand C004) from Brasov, will also be presenting a KBA Performa 74 half-format press.

The Grafico printshop was founded by its owner Michal Štěpánek in 1995. Prior to that Mr Štěpánek studied at economics university. As a student he went to France to work during the wine harvests. He invested the money he made into computer equipment and began to process typesetting for Opava printshops. He soon had problems with order deadlines at the partner printshops, a problem that he resolved by founding his own printshop.

When in January 2005 the management of Grafitec prepared the launch of direct sales of Performer and Prestige sheet-fed offset machines on the Polish market, their plan included an optimistic, realistic and pessimistic version. The March acquisition, the incorporation of Dobruška into the KBA family and conception of KBA-Grafitec were, along with the strong marketing support and the excellent reputation of printing machines from Dobruška, the main engine of the current success on the Polish market.

Not long ago a KBA Performa 66-4 replaced a Polly 466 at the Wendy printshop in Mělník. The Performa 66-4 is now the third printing machine from Dobruška that the printshop has operated in six years. The Wendy printshop was established in 1992 by joint owners Stanislav Kotek and Ivan Žalud. Wendy has gone through the now classic development from the first machine, which was an older Romayor, to a modern KBA Performa 66-4 printing machine.

Strong growth in sheet and web · New orders up 17.7% · Sales up 29.2% · Upturn in domestic market · Operating profit · Annual target reaffirmed

On the 10th March 2005 Grafitec became part of the KBA group. Four months from acquisition we met with KBA's President Albrecht Bolza-Schünemann and KBA-Grafitec Managing Director Jens Junker to ask how the "inclusion of Dobruška in the KBA family" is going in practice.

After Grafitec integration into the KBA group, the external design of the printing presses manufactured in Dobruška also changed. The green colour of the Polly Performer 66 and Polly Prestige 74 printing presses was substituted by the blue finish of the Performa 66 and Performa 74 line, which is the typical external appearance of all KBA products.

The installing of CtP Presstek Dimension 400 in the Geoprint printshop in Liberec in April of this year further proof that the CtP systems are finding their use in smaller printshops.

The Van Druck printshop in Sedlčany is a long-term partner of KBA-Grafitec. The Sedlčany company prints on offset printing machines from Dobruška and recently became the first in the Czech Republic to use CtP Presstek Dimension 425 Excel.

Since 1992 Uniprint, s.r.o., in Rychnov nad Kněžnou, has exclusively printed with printing machines from Dobruška. At the start of June the KBA Performa 66-5 had its premiere in the printshop. The machine was exhibited at the EmbaxPrint trade fair in Brno, where KBA-Grafitec presented itself as a member of the KBA group in the Czech Republic for the first time.

On May 27, 2005 President and CEO of Koenig und Bauer AG Mr. Albrecht Bolza-Schünemann together with Dr. Peter Jargstorf, Sales Director of KBA and Mr. Wladimir Melnitchenko of KBA RUS paid a visit to ZAO „International Printing Systems“ IPRIS Head Office in St. Petersburg where they had the meeting with Mr. Alexey Kuchinsky, Managing Director, Mr. Yuri Ibragimov, Sales and Marketing Director and Mrs. Elena Fadina, Head of Equipment Sales Department, in order to coordinate both companies marketing and sales efforts in Russia.

This year's Embax Print will be welcoming print industry professionals and decisionmakers to the exhibition centre in Brno, Czech Republic, from 17th to 20th May. Koenig & Bauer will be represented at the biennial fair by its Czech subsidiary, Dobruška-based KBA-Grafitec, whose generous stand is to be found in Hall F.

A week after the end of the Poligrafia 2005 trade fair, very important for the Polish market, KBA-Grafitec recapitulated its results. At the actual exhibition four contracts were signed, whereas a whole range of contracts were concluded in the period running up to the trade fair.

A good four weeks after agreeing to purchase Grafitec, a Czech specialist manufacturer of multicolour SRA2 and B2 presses (Polly), KBA has virtually completed the company's integration into its sheetfed offset facility in Radebeul near Dresden, a facility that has seen vigorous organic growth over the past twelve years.

On March 10 the KBA group became a 100 % owner of Grafitec. The acquisition is part of the KBA strategy, to extend its scope of activities also to the segment of small-format printing machines, where further growth is expected.

Twelve days after the announcement of the acquisition by the German company KBA, the new KBA-Grafitec summoned its foreign distributors to a joint meeting in Dobruška. Over two days, from March 22 to 23, intense discussions on international distribution and service for printing machines manufactured by KBA‑Grafitec took place.

German press manufacturer Koenig & Bauer AG (KBA) has agreed to purchase Czech counterpart Grafitec, spol. s r.o. for an undisclosed sum, from American investment fund Charles Investment Partners and minority shareholders.

The regular annual exhibition Graphics of the Americas took place this year in Miami, Florida from 4th to 6th February. It took place under the sign of JDF and Grafitec was there. As one of the six leading companies in the field and the only producer of sheet-fed offset presses, Grafitec presented the possibilities of JDF.

Grafitec has announced that as of 1. 1. 2005 it has entered the Polish market as a producer and supplier of SRA2 and B2 format sheet-fed offset presses and a distributor of CTP and materials of the American company Presstek.

The fourth CTP installed by Grafitec is a CTP Presstek Dimension 400 in the printshop of Petr Pošík in Poděbrady. The CTP was delivered with a SRA2 format Polly 466 printing machine and installed at the new premises of the Pošík Company, where operations were transferred at the start of the year.

The company Presstek, represented in the Czech Republic by Grafitec, continues the constant development of its CTP equipment. The novelty presented at the Drupa exhibition was the Profire II Excel laser head.