On 13 December earnings by Czech sheetfed press manufacturer KBA-Grafitec surpassed one billion korunas ($40m) for the first time in the company’s 50-year history, according to CEO Jens Junker. Before the end of the year, the historical landmark of one billion will be exceeded by several more tens of millions korunas. Total annual turnover will thus increase by 31 per cent.

From December 2006, KBA will also be supplying its Performa 74 press with inline sheet-turning facilities for high-quality perfecting. The first successful customer installations, for example at Luthe Druck und Medienservice in Cologne, have demonstrated the potential of the Performa 74 for even greater flexibility and productivity.

As in previous years, KBA has pulled out all the stops in its formidable inline coating repertoire to create a calendar for 2007 that illustrates the unusual and stunning effects possible with the hybrid technology that the group has done so much to make an established feature of sheetfed production. Colourful and bright, the calendar will cheer up any wall.

In the third quarter the KBA group more or less wiped out a shortfall from the first half-year with an order intake worth €527.3m – the highest in any quarter in its history. New orders for the nine months to 30 September totalled €1,246.6m, just 4.8% below last year’s figure of €1,309.9m, which was boosted by a number of big contracts. Sales climbed 8.9% from €1,107.3m to €1,205.5m. The €1,082m backlog of unfilled orders was roughly the same as in 2005 (€1,095.6m). Group operating profit almost doubled to €30.1m (2005: €16.1m), and pre-tax earnings (EBT) more than trebled to €30.4m (2005: €8.9m).

What does 60-employee C/A Grafica in Vigo, Spain, have in common with 15,000-strong Leo Papers in Heshan, China? According to Ed Bogaard, president of Eurographic Press, both demonstrate how western printers must square up to cut-price competition: by focusing on creativity and innovation as the key to defending market share.

A pioneering spirit is not the preserve of big business, German printshop Franz Lovischach in Lüdenscheid, with its payroll of six, can testify. In 1966 it was just the fourth in the country to install a Berthold Diatype filmsetter and in March 2006 it flicked the switch on the first KBA Performa 66 in Germany – and the third worldwide – to sport an inline coater.

Newcastle, Maine, USA - KBA – North America has recently completed the installation of a Performa PE 74 - 4 at Lincoln County Publishing. The machine was sold by KBA - N.A. dealer, Graphics Equipment of Portland Maine and is the third machine of KBA-Grafitec production for this long standing customer.

KBA’s Austrian subsidiary, KBA-Mödling, has inaugurated a new 2,500m² (27,000ft²) assembly hall for screen-printing, numbering, finishing and other special machines associated with the production of banknotes and securities. The oldest and biggest of KBA’s foreign production plants, the Mödling facility started building presses such as the waterless offset Simultan in the mid-1960s, and took over production of the entire security press range a few years ago.

Drukarnia Księży Werbistów located in the small Polish town of Górna Grupa in the northern part of Poland between Bydgoszcz and Gdansk witnessed the presentation of the KBA Performa 74-5 printing machine on Wednesday, 4th October.

On Friday 15 September, the opening ceremony took place for the 'Homage to František Kupka' exhibition in Opočno. The exhibition takes place in the Castle Villa – only a few dozen metres from the world-famous painter's birthplace. František Kupka was born in Opočno in 1871. During his childhood years he lived in Dobruška, but spent most of his life in France. He died in 1957 in Puteaux, not far from Paris.

The KBA-Grafitec company has undergone some dynamic changes since the integration into the group of KBA companies. Some of these changes are noticeable from the external view of the company premises whereas other changes can only be seen inside the production hall. Over a period of eighteen months, from the time when Grafitec became a part of the KBA group, many modern technologies, especially in the production of the parts for printing machines were implemented as part of the development investment programme. The company development has been accompanied by the increased demand for KBA Performa 74 and KBA Performa 66 printing machines for both the domestic and foreign markets.

11 September 2006 – The KBA Performa 74 printing machine in the SRB2 format has now infiltrated into Czech printshops. The five-colour Performa 74-5 was one of the most recent installations provided in June for the Retis company in Krnov.

Although the months of July and August are usually allocated to the summer holidays, the production assembly of the KBA-Grafitec company in Dobruška continued with the completion and expedition of the printing machines just like in any other month. The increased number of orders accepted by the manufacturer in the first half of the year has maximised the production and assembly capacity. However, the time contracts will not wait so the work at the assembly hall has not stopped even during the period when most companies were closed for holidays.

The successful world-wide printing machine manufacturer, the KBA-Grafitec company located in Dobruška, has launched a new company information system, the most modern version within the KBA concern. The SAP information system was officially debugged by 30.7.2006 so the entire project could be completed within not even a year after the decision was made to install such a system. This required outstanding devotion and effort from those staff of KBA-Grafitec who played their part in the system implementation and who dedicated approximately 8,200 man hours to the work, often on Saturdays and Sundays, as well as the company consultants from S & T Services who provided the SAP system implementation. Within KBA-Grafitec the completion of this project is considered as a very important landmark and as an efficient tool on the way to higher work productivity.

In the first six months the KBA group posted a modest 5.1% lift in sales to €726.5m (2005: €691m). While the volume of new orders, at €719.3m, fell short of the prior year’s exceptionally high figure of €860.9m following softer sales of sheetfed, webfed gravure and security presses, the pace picked up again in July. An order backlog of €1,033.7m (2005: €1,062.9m) will keep production plants busy for the rest of the year.

Extends leadership position in chemistry-free CTP with the Anthem Pro plate. Presstek, Inc., (Nasdaq: PRST), a leading manufacturer and supplier of high-tech digital imaging solutions for the graphic arts market, (today) announced the introduction of Presstek’s Anthem Pro, a new generation chemistry-free thermally imaged digital plate. The Anthem Pro is the latest addition to Presstek’s industry leading portfolio of truly chemistry-free thermal plates. The Anthem Pro delivers improved print performance with the addition of Presstek’s exclusive PRO graining technology. The new plate made its worldwide debut at the IPEX exhibition in Birmingham UK from April 4th to 11th.

Following last year’s award for the Rapida 205 VLF press, KBA has now received the prestigious 2006 InterTech Technology Award from Printing Industries of America/Graphic Arts Technical Foundation (PIA/GATF) for its Genius 52UV sheetfed offset press, one of 11 nominations out of 35 entries. The award will be presented at the 2006 PIA/GATF Fall Administrative Meeting, November 9 -12 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

The Dragon Press print shop in Klatovy was established during the revolution days of 1989. “At that time, Michal Kučera and his first partner got hold of one of the oldest types of Romayor without an inking unit and used it to print information materials,” says Mr. Josef Majer, joint owner and executive head of Dragon Press Ltd., describing the company's first printing machine. Over the course of sixteen years, the company has used a number of different printing machines – the most recent one is KBA Performa 66-4.

The KUFR Publishing House was founded in 1994 in Prague. It started in a “garage” print shop with an old Romayor. “We had to fix the machine ourselves, first,” remembers the company's founder, Mr. František Kurzweil. All the multi-colour machines the company purchased since then came from Dobruška. In May this year, KUFR purchased a KBA Performa 66-4 printing machine.

You could say that 2005 was the year of SRB2 format for KBA-Grafitec on the Polish market. Sales figures confirm this – 52 printing units of the KBA Performa 74 sheet-fed printing machine were sold to Polish customers during the whole year. The smaller SRA2 format, represented at Dobruška by the KBA Performa 66 sheet-fed printing machine, was also successful – 13 printing units were installed in Poland.

The printing house SAMBA servis Ltd. is well known in the market for its close co-operation with the company BOBO BLOK. Recently it has moved from Vrchotovy Janovice to Sedlčany. It prints on machines from Dobruška and prepares printing plates with the CtP Presstek device supplied by KBA-Grafitec.

In line with KBA's motto “Champions in Print”, Open House Performa 74 took place in the X line printing house in Bratislava on 14 June 2006, organised by GRAFITEC SLOVAKIA. This was a special first appearance of the five-colour KBA Performa 74 printing machine together with a presentation of CTP Presstek.

Speaking to a packed hall at the 81st AGM convened by German press manufacturer Koenig & Bauer AG (KBA), group president and CEO Albrecht Bolza-Schünemann reaffirmed his upbeat prognosis for 2006 despite the fact that in the first five months demand had been relatively modest. Sales topped the prior-year figure by more than €40m, and though shipping schedules meant they once again fell short of the annual target and thus impaired group earnings, the situation at mid-year will be better than at the end of the first quarter. While the volume of new orders failed to equal the previous year’s exceptionally high figure, and bookings for special security and gravure presses also eased, sales of sheetfed and commercial presses picked up in the second quarter. KBA will issue its half-year figures on 11 August.

The KBA-Grafitec company this year celebrates the 50th anniversary of the start of printing machine production. Part of the jubilee celebrations of the company was the open day which took place on Saturday, 10th of June. The opportunity to view the company production area attracted more than two thousand, two hundred visitors who were presented with the most important company production technology along with the final assembly of the KBA Performa 74 and Performa 66 printing machines. The KBA-Grafitec invitation to visit the open day was also accepted by customers and the business partners who were given the personal attention of the company management lead by the CEO, Jens Junker.

Jade Press, Leeds is buying the first KBA Performa 74 to be installed in the UK. It will add to the company’s existing KBA press, a Rapida 74 six colour installed only last year.

On Thursday, 25th May, the Specialized Secondary school for Media Graphics and the Graphic Art industry (later referred to as SOŠmgp) in Rumburk along with the attending representatives of their supplier, the KBA-Grafitec company, the President of the Association of Graphic Art industry Entrepreneurs, Ing. Jan Sochůrek, representatives of the specialized graphic art education and the specialized press plus other invited guests celebrated the launch of the new two colour sheet-fed offset machine, the KBA Performa 66-2.

How does a printing firm find precisely the right press to meet all its needs? Not just for the present, but for the future as well? After checking out the market, Gazelle in Belgium opted for the first KBA Performa 74 in the Benelux states. “It is the ideal press for all our needs,” says John Verbiest, one of the two members of the administrative board.

KBA-Grafitec and the Garamon company held, especially for VIP guests, a presentation of the KBA Performa 74-4 printing machine on Thursday, 27th April at 10.00 a.m. The presentation took place in the premises of the new reference Garamon printshop in Hradec Králové where the Performa 74-4 printing machine has been in operation since the beginning of February.

German print boutique Stöckle offers a complete range of services from pre-press, digital studio photography, offset and digital print production to finishing and logistics. Established more than 70 years ago, the company is still in the hands of the founding family, four of which now run the firm assisted by five employees. In mid-February Stöckl replaced an ageing four-colour press with a KBA Performa 74 five-colour for the same sheet size.

At Grafitalia 2006, to be held at the new exhibition centre Fiera Milano in Rho from 9th to 13th May, Koenig & Bauer (KBA) will be unpacking some of its very latest developments for small-, half- and medium-format sheetfed offset, including corresponding integrated workflows. With everyone geared up to the forthcoming World Cup, the “Champi-ons in Print” banner which proved both fitting and successful at the re-cent IPEX fair in Birmingham will be rolled out again over the 700 m² KBA-Italia stand in Hall 13 (Stand No. D49/D55).

The AG TYP company from Kostelec nad Orlicí has been operating on the market since 1989. The company was set up as a cooperative printshop. It was privatized in 1991 by five associates. The company founders have been working in the graphic art industry since leaving school. They gained their experience as machine and hand compositors in the Eastern Bohemian Pardubice printshop, namely in the Rychnov nad Kněžnou branch. Messrs. Josef Knížek, Pavel Mervart, Luboš Šmída, Jan Martinec and Vladimír Falta have remained loyal to the graphic art trade. Besides the company owners, there are currently another 12 employees working in the AG TYP printshop. The printshops customers are mainly from Prague but also from Eastern Bohemia. Both regions account for approximately 50% of the printshop sales results.

Already, just a few days after the IPEX 2006 world exhibition, which took place from the 4th to 11th April 2006 in the English city of Birmingham, it is fully evident that KBA-Grafitec can talk of a successful exhibition. A whole range of contracts have been signed at this exhibition. The highest amount of interest was in the KBA Performa 74 machines of the SRB2 format (52 x 74 cm) which were ordered by customers from Germany, Great Britain, Ukraine, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. The total number of orders exceeded the forecasted company annual turnover by 8%.

Germany is hosting the World Cup this summer, and it was the dominant theme on the spacious KBA stand in hall 4 at Ipex in Birmingham. Not surprisingly, it was also reflected in the group’s banner, “KBA: Champions in Print”, and the print samples produced on its three sheetfed offset presses (B3, B2 and B1) using JDF workflows. As the World Cup approaches, enthusiasm in England – the country where the game originated – is reaching fever pitch.

Mr. Marek Urban, the company owner and Director of the BAAD, Sp .z.o.o. offset printshop from Nowy Szac, gives in the following article the details and reasons behind the purchase of the KBA Performa 74 in the interview with Adam Slazynski from KBA-Grafitec.

KBA-Grafitec continues in regular meetings with potential buyers of the sheet-fed offset printing machines of the KBA Performa brand and of the CtP systems from the American company, Presstek. The last such event was the Open House in the Duet printshop in Kielce which took place on Thursday, 23rd October 2006.

Another Turkish printshop has chosen the KBA Performa 74 printing machine. After very good sales results of the KBA Performa printing machines in 2004 and 2005, the 2006 year also began successfully in Turkey. In February the Performa 74-4 was installed and put in to operation in the RÜYA Matbaacilik Istanbul printshop.

Fineline Print Solutions in Cape Town is making news by being the first printer in Africa to install a KBA Performa 74 half-size press.

The KBA group benefited from rising domestic demand in 2005 to boost sales by an impressive 13.9% to €1,621m (2004: €1,423m). Announcing the results at a press conference on 30 March, Albrecht Bolza-Schünemann, president and CEO of the parent, Koenig & Bauer AG (KBA), revealed that operating profit jumped to €33.3m, from €20.4m the previous year. The venue, at major KBA customer Pressehaus Stuttgart, whose titles include the Stuttgarter Zeitung, was chosen to give analysts an idea of the scale and sophistication of present-day newspaper production lines.

The regional print exhibition Graphitec 2006 in Paris proved to be a very successful event for Koenig & Bauer AG (KBA) and its French subsidiary KBA-France, for whom this was the first major opportunity to present their half-format KBA Performa 74 press and a Genius 52 UV for the A3+ format to the French trade public. A number of contracts were signed directly on the exhibition stand. A further KBA Rapida 74 has been ordered by Polykrome in Dakar, Senegal, and a five-colour Rapida 105 is to be delivered to a customer in the Paris area in the summer.

The Garamon printing and publishing house has been operating in Hradec Králové since 1997. It is entering its 10th year in business as a successful medium-sized company with all the necessary technologies for the preparation, printing and finishing processes at its disposal. The newest piece of equipment, installed at the beginning of February 2006, is a KBA Performa 74-4 printing machine.

On 8th March 2006 exactly one year since Grafitec became a 100% subsidiary of the KBA syndicate, the German printing machine producer, which has since enlarged their product portfolio with the segment of the small format printing machine.

On the 23rd of February, the KBA-Grafitec company held in Brno the traditional meeting with those customers involved over the past term in the majority of installations of the new Performa printing machines. The ceremonial meeting took place in the impressive premises of the Queen Elizabeth wine cellar (U královny Elišky). The invitation was accepted by almost one hundred attendees from the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland. Those who accepted the invitations were also representatives of the printshops which became the owners of the KBA Performa 74 and 66 printing machines in the last year, business partners from Poland and Slovakia and also representatives of the leasing companies who help with the financing of the printing machines supplied to the market. The invitation was also accepted by representatives of the technical press from the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland. Guests were welcomed by the KBA-Grafitec General Manager, Mr. Jens Junker.

On February 2, 2006 the company International Polygraphic Systems IPRIS, an exclusive representative of KBA-Grafitec in Russia, celebrated the launch of the first model of the new Performa 74-4 printing machine in the 52x74 format in the Profprint printshop in St. Petersburg. This event received a large response from the graphic artists in Russia. Among those invited you could meet not just representatives of the St. Petersburg and Moscow printshops but also guests from Kaliningrad, Rostov upon Don, Belgorod, Kirov, Krasnoyarsk and other towns.

At the Graphitec 2006 trade fair, which takes place from 15 to 18 March in Paris, KBA will be represented on stand E076, hall 4 by its French subsidiary, KBA-France. While the focus will be on B3 and B2 sheetfed, in the shape of live demos on a Genius 52 and Performa 74, KBA will also be promoting other technologies.

The Ipex international trade fair in Birmingham will see KBA throwing down the gauntlet with a provocative banner – ‘Champions in Print’ – and B3 to B1 (20 - 40in) presses laying claim to the most advanced technology on the market, fully embedded in JDF workflows. Not surprisingly, the World Cup football championships due to kick off two months later in Germany will be a central theme on the group’s 1,300m² (14,000ft²) stand (4-B60/4-B70) in hall 4. As at Ipex 2002, space and budget restrictions mean there will be no exhibits from KBA’s historically dominant line of business, web presses. However, a string of pre-Ipex events is being organised to platform advances in both sheetfed and web technology.

September 2005 saw KBA-Grafitec launched on the North American market for the first time as part of the KBA group at the Print 05 exhibition in Chicago. The company exhibited the fully equipped KBA Performa 74-5+L which now functions in the Full Color Printing printshop in Las Vegas.

The preview of the printing machines which were despatched at the end of the year from the KBA-Grafitec production company in Dobruška and installed within recent weeks at client premises demonstrates the increased interest in the KBA Performa 74 printing machines in the SRB2 format.

Both the Czech domestic and foreign markets are showing an increased interest in Performa machines for both format lines. KBA-Grafitec rounded off a successful year in 2005 with further installations in December for both the Czech and foreign markets. Here is the first part of the selection.

On Monday, 16th of January 2006, KBA-Grafitec company representatives invited their Polish service partners to Chateau Radziejowice in Poland. The pleasant environment of the chateau park together with the atmosphere of the historic interior created an ideal meeting venue. The goal of the meeting was to balance results for the year 2005 and targets for the year 2006. The invitation to the Radziejowice meeting, near Warsaw, was accepted by all representatives of the current Polish authorized service partners of KBA-Grafitec – the companies of Lubicz Krakow, Poligrafserwis Krakow, Naprawa Maszyn Poligraficznych Potrawiak Poznan, Autoryzowany Serwis Maszyn Poligraficznych Gdyna and Polmasz Warszawa. The meeting was hosted by the sales representatives for the Polish market, Mr. Andrzej Gumulka and Mr. Adam Slazynski, and Mr. Jan Korenc, Vice-President Sales and Service, Mr. Jan Hejzlar, Service Manager, Mr. Luděk Buchta, Marketing Manager and Mr. Lukáš Pavel, Product Manager of KBA-Grafitec.

KBA’s monochrome calendar “Cities 2006” printed in 4c. Published by quality book and calendar specialist Edition Panorama, KBA’s new 350 x 1,000mm (13¾ x 39½in) calendar, “Cities 2006”, features twelve unusual shots by prominent German photographer Horst Hamann, whose profession has led him from his birthplace, Mannheim, to more than 70 countries on every continent, amassing a repertoire of horizontal and vertical panoramic views, all in black and white, that have won him countless national and international awards.