KBA’s sumptuous calendar for 2008, “Impressions 2008”, is the work of Dresden photographer Michael Lange, who took natural objects – shells, wood bark, feathers, stones, plants and animals – and double-exposed them against colourful backdrops to create images of such artistry that it is hard to believe they are purely photographs processed for printing and finishing. Each page, with the essence of the image expressed in just one word, invites the observer to dwell and to meditate, to explore the fascinating details and to let the imagination run free.

On the 26th and 27th October, KBA Italia organised a demonstration of the production capacity of the new five-colour printing press KBA Performa 74 at the premises of its Turin customer Grafica 5. This encounter with clients provided an opportunity to demonstrate printing and the operations carried out when changing to a new printing-job and also to get more closely acquainted with KBA's small offset press. One presentation of special interest was the demonstration of the application of Huber MetalFX inks for achieving metallic shades without varnishing.

KBA-Grafitec adopted the programme for supporting schools. The programme focuses on the Czech Republic as well as other countries where the KBA Performa 74 and KBA Performa 66 presses are traditionally exported to. The programme includes the delivery and installation of the printing presses which are used for tutorial purposes. The adopted programme is not limited to only tutoring but contains further activities.

In spite of the closure in Lidköping last year of porcelain manufac-turer Rörstand, founded in 1726 and therefore one of the oldest such companies in Europe, the picturesque city at Lake Vänern, the largest lake in Sweden, continues to be a top location for the printing industry. It is here in Lidköping, situated between the two metropolitan cities of Stockholm and Göteborg, that Strokirk Land-ströms has been based since 1903. One of the oldest graphics firms in the country, it uses not just one but two long Rapida 105 perfecting presses with DriveTronic SPC direct drive technology.

The Dobruška manufacturer of the offset presses, KBA-Grafitec, organized for more than forty customers and graphic art media representatives another specialised seminar, this time entitled the “People from Mars and printing!”, held on 11 October in the Břevnov Monastery in Prague. The topics of the seminar were trends and innovations in the development of the sheet-fed offset presses, searching for new opportunities during the provision of printing services and colour printing control.

Argraf is a small Warsaw printshop located in the ground floor of a building on the banks of the Visla River. The printshop employs 18 people of which 12 work in production. The company built their position and name on the local market mainly due to orders from the printing of books and magazines which deal with historical topics. The increasing demands from clients pushed the company management into purchasing a new KBA Performa 74 press from the Dobruška factory.

From the 2nd-5th October, the traditional Printexpo exhibition was held in Budapest. For the first time, KBA was represented by an SRB2 format machine in the Hungarian Capital and the KBA Performa 74-5 machine dominated the trade fair. It is the largest machine the fair's visitors have ever been able to see there. Despite the challenging conditions during installation, the machine showed its reliability and even its state-of-the-art equipment proved more than satisfactory to those interested.

Leicester-based B1 printer Polar Print Group and manufacturer KBA today officially announced that they have signed a ground-breaking deal which will see Polar take delivery of what is believed to be the world’s first carbon-balanced printing press.

We visited the Krakow company of Unidruk due to reasons of the latest investment in the form of a five-colour KBA Performa 74 printing press. Next year, the company will celebrate 15 years of its existence. The printshop uses new technologies to the fullest possible extent – the majority of orders arrive via the internet.

On 20th and 21st September, KBA welcomed some 500 guests from over a dozen European countries to an open house at its sheetfed offset manufacturing facility in Radebeul to present the DriveTronic SPC direct plate cylinder drive technology for simultaneous plate changing and consequently impressive productivity gains at job changeovers on the high-performance Rapida 105 press.

KBA-Grafitec, s.r.o. from Dobruška, a significant producer of sheet-fed offset printing presses grossed 620 million CZK in the first half of the year. In comparison with the same period last year, this figure represents a five percent increase. Exports accounted for approximately 70% of the half year revenues which represents a figure of 434 million CZK. The information was provided by the Vice President Sales and Service, Ing. Jan Korenc, who also added that the consecutive results confirm the high dynamic of KBA-Grafitec economic growth over the previous four years. Last years company revenues exceeded the one milliard figure for the first time. The increase of the turnover for 2007 is expected as well.

The Filip printshop was founded in 1990 as a small company providing graphic art services. In the first five years, the services were provided on an incompatible single colour printing press of the SRB3 format.

On the occasion of the installation of the KBA Performa 74-4 press in Hungary, KBA Slovakia, which also represents KBA-Grafitec on the Hungarian market, organized an open-house on 24 August 2007. The KBA Performa 74 Open House was held in the printshop of GRAFIT NYOMDA R Kft. in Nyíregyháze.

In the first six months German press manufacturer Koenig & Bauer (KBA) posted group sales of €794.9m, 9.4% up on the previous year’s €726.5m. The order intake rose 1% to €726.3m (2006: €719.3m).

On 29 November 1814, 360 years after Gutenberg invented the hand press, Friedrich Koenig and Andreas Bauer revolutionised printing when they used their new steam-powered double-cylinder printing press to print The Times in London. 190 years ago, on 9 August 1817, the two pioneers established the world’s first printing press factory in a secularised monastery in Oberzell, near Würzburg, Germany.

On 29 June, the FGP Studio company organized a meeting with customers and suppliers named the Day of Colours in their Olomouc printshop. Representatives from the participating companies were welcomed by Mr Miloslav Kyjevský, the owner of the FGP Studio. The printshop organized the ceremonial launch of the new KBA Performa 74-5 and KBA Performa 66-5 presses. The FGP Studio company is regarded as one of the prominent domestic customers of the KBA-Grafitec. The FGP Studio prints exclusively on the Dobruška machines. KBA-Grafitec was represented at the Day of Colours by the Vice President Finance, Zdeněk Forejtek, the head of domestic service Elena Šubrtová and the sales representative Bohuslav Poláček.

KBA will be presenting the DriveTronic SPC, its plate cylinder direct drive option for the highly-automated Rapida 105 medium-format press, at open house events in Germany and Austria in the second half of September. The slogan for the option is "More production, less setup".

KBA recently welcomed the most influential group from the UK cartons industry ever to have visited its major sheetfed press manufacturing facility in Dresden.

The H&B Tisk company was founded in August 1989 as a two person partnership. It was the first privately owned printshop to be established in Opava where they started production with just one Grafopress. However, the company development is actually linked to the Dobruška printing machines. The owners transformed the company in 1997 into a joint stock company. Counting 43 employees, the company currently falls into the medium size group of graphic art companies. H&B Tisk extended their printing capacity with the KBA Performa 74-5 and KBA Performa 66-2 machines in the first half of this year. The first machine purchased in Dobruška in 1993 was the Polly 745. The printing machines have served reliably up to the present day and are still in a good technical condition after fourteen years of operation. The Director and the Chairman of the Board of the H&B Tisk joint stock company, Mr Zdeněk Bielák, said: “We are happy with the machine. Grafitec provides an operative service as required. The service care from Dobruška is perfect and the production company has certainly benefited from the merger with KBA."

KBA North America in Williston, VT, is proud to announce that it has a 3-peat for the GATF InterTech Technology Award from Printing Industries of America/Graphic Arts Technical Foundation (PIA/GATF). KBA captured the prestigious 2007 InterTech Technology Award for the Rapida 105’s unique Sensoric Infeed System (SIS), a sidelay-free infeed feature found on its new generation 41-inch sheetfed presses. During the past two years, KBA has won InterTech Awards for its Rapida 205 81-inch sheetfed press in 2005 and for its Genius 52 UV offset press in 2006.

La industria de poligrafía en Espańa es para el grupo de empresas KBA uno de los mercados más importantes a escala europea. Las sociedades KBA AG y KBA-Grafitec adoptaron una decisión estratégica conjunta que entronca con sus exitosos resultados en Espańa en los ańos anteriores. Ambas sociedades han tomado la firme decisión de optar por una gestión de venta directa y servicio al cliente a partir del 17 de Julio de 2007.

The Spanish graphic art industry represents for the KBA group, one of the most important European markets. KBA AG and KBA‑Grafitec companies agreed a common strategic decision linked to their successful results in Spain over the previous years. Both companies have taken firm decision to implement direct sales and service from KBA-Grafitec head office with effect from July 17, 2007.

The KBA-Grafitec company has confirmed its leading position in the production of printing machines in the Czech Republic. At the same time, the company also leads the way in the supply of printing machines in the SRA2 format on the Czech market. In June, the company supplied the Czech Republic printshops with a total of six KBA Performa 74 and KBA Performa 66 printing machines in the total range of 29 printing units. From these six machines, two are in the SRB2 format.

Despite the import duties which remain due for printing presses delivered to China, KBA has been able to record further sales on the Chinese market to follow up its very successful participation at the Print China fair in April 2007. One of the most recent orders was received from the northern port city Tianjin, the centre of the new Chinese “boom zone” Bohai-Rim. As the outcome of intensive market research, Tianjin Yiyao Printing Co. Ltd. has chosen a KBA Rapida 105 universal with six printing units, coating tower, double-length delivery extension and UV options.

The KBA company organized a charity star bike ride between 8th and 9th June. The KBA Sternfahrt 2007 event started from locations in Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria and Switzerland where the KBA group has its subsidiaries. The finish for all the cyclists was in Würzburg. This was the town of the final destination where the mission for the first stage of the charity star bike ride was accomplished on the 9th June.

On 1st June the KBA-Grafitec company organized the First Bike Ride for all the lovers of cycling from the lines of their own business partners. The Dobruška organizers chose the route near the Orlické Mountains which provides a beautiful although demanding cycling terrain. The first bike ride under KBA Grafitec patronage was attended by 40 cyclists. A total of 26 cycling supporters registered for the trip from printshops and other cooperating organisations. The KBA‑Grafitec management was represented this time by the CEO, Mr Jens Junker and the Vice President Finance, Mr Zdeněk Forejtek. The domestic salesmen did not also miss out. The group of cyclists was escorted by four professional guides from the Apollo Doldy team from Náchod.

Speaking to a full house at the 82nd AGM of German press manufacturer Koenig & Bauer AG (KBA), group president and CEO Albrecht Bolza-Schünemann reaffirmed his March projections for 2007 of group sales totalling €1.7bn and a pre-tax profit on a similar scale to last year’s €47.4m. Although investment in big newspaper and gravure press lines has been slow for the past year, buoyant demand for sheetfed and special presses meant that the volume of orders for the first five months of 2007 was a good €70m up on the prior-year figure. Sales were also higher, and KBA projects a rise in sales and a profit in the first half-year, figures for which will be published on 14 August.

The new high-speed Rapida 105 will already be going into production in Sundbyberg on the outskirts of Stockholm in early summer. It will then be the fifth Rapida sheetfed offset press to be delivered to Alfa Print within just three years. Managing director Lars Adolfsson and his team were at KBA in Radebeul on 10th May for final testing of the new eight-colour perfector press for 4-over-4 production. Their latest medium-format acquisition, a representative of the 18,000 sph generation, incorporates extensive automation features, including FAPC fully automatic plate changing, ACR-Control (video register) and automatic ink supplies. It is also to be integrated into the company's existing LogoTronic printshop network.

The International EmbaxPrint trade fair which took place from the 22nd to 25th May 2007 at the Brno Exhibition Centre demonstrated the very strong position of KBA-Grafitec and the entire KBA group on the Czech and Central European market. The producer of the KBA Performa 74 and 66 printing machines sold five of the printing machines at the trade fair. Their new owners will be printshops from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Russia. The contracts signed at the trade fair include four KBA Performa 74 printing machines of the SRB2 format and one KBA Performa 66 machine of the SRA2 format. The business success confirmed that the EmbaxPrint trade fair is for KBA-Grafitec, not just a local event but has international significance. The machine orders for the above mentioned countries are no accident. The sales representatives for the Czech and Polish market together with the Slovak and Hungarian representative, the company KBA Slovakia and the representative for Ukraine, the company MacHouse, all staffed the exhibition stand during the trade fair. The invitation was also accepted by the management of the Russian representation of the IPRIS company who arrived with a group of 12 Russian customers. For the first time, KBA-Grafitec also exhibited at the EmbaxPrint trade fair as the dealer for the KBA Rapida printing machines.

Last October representatives from Eurographic Press (EP) paid a visit to Spanish printing firm Novoprint in Sant Andreu de la Barca (Barce-lona). The purpose of the visit was not only to see the company’s web offset and B1 (40in) sheetfed presses but also to learn why Novoprint, which has been active in the field for the past 20 years, has installed a 1,020 x 1,420mm (56in) five-colour KBA Rapida 142. For some EP professionals, a tour of the 200m² (2,150ft²) hall housing a graphic arts museum – founder Andrés Bellido’s hobby – complete with “op-erators” manning the machines, took them back to their early years. “We even have a wooden proofing press using stones instead of plates. We would love to learn how to operate it.”

Embax Print 2007, to be held in Brno/Czech Republic from 22nd to 25th May, will see the Koenig & Bauer group (KBA) represented in Hall F on the stands of its subsidiary KBA-Grafitec spol. s r.o. from Dobruška and the KBA web sales agency Kloc spol. from Prague. Live demonstrations will enable visitors to experience for themselves the performance of the KBA Performa 66 in A2 format and the Performa 74 in B2 format. Specialists from KBA-Grafitec and Kloc spol., together with colleagues from Germany, will be on hand to offer comprehensive information on the broad KBA press range.

Representatives of high-powered Russian printing house Obraztsovaya Tipografia in St Petersburg recently signed the acceptance certificate at KBA’s Radebeul facility for their first KBA press, a Rapida 105 that will join one half-format and four medium-format Heidelberg presses. Slated to come on stream shortly before the “white nights” set in, the press will have an unusual twelve-unit configuration with perfecting after the fifth unit, a coater as the twelfth unit, an extended delivery and a board-printing capability. While this particular configuration was chosen to print high-quality tea packaging, it is suitable for any type of light packaging (eg for health care products, cosmetics, food and semi-luxury goods) and will enhance cost efficiency and automation.

KBA-Grafitec is an established participant of the Poligrafia trade fair in Poznan. However this year's fair, which took place from 27th to 30th March, was in many aspects a record-breaking occasion for KBA-Grafitec. During the fair itself, contracts were signed with Polish customers for the delivery of three KBA Performa 74 printing machines for the SRB2 format and four KBA Performa 66 machines for the SRA2 format. Three more transactions were negotiated during the fair and are ready to be signed. After the successful Poligrafia fair in Poznan, KBA-Grafitec can confirm with certainty that this year it will improve on its results from 2006 when it sold 16 printing machines in the Polish market. At the same time, last year's sales results made KBA-Grafitec No. 1 for the SRA2/SRB2 format in Poland for the second year running.

Clear signals that the printing industry in South Africa is on an upswing were evident at the Print Expo 2007 trade fair that took place from 13 to 16 March at the NASREC Exhibition Centre in Bertsham (Johannesburg). This contrasts with the previous show in 2004, when the absence of major exhibitors put a dampener on expectations.

Substantially higher earnings than in the previous year was the good news announced by Albrecht Bolza-Schünemann, president and CEO of Koenig & Bauer AG (KBA), at a press conference on 29 March at Stürtz in Würzburg. The venue, at a major user of KBA sheetfed and web presses in the city where KBA is headquartered, was chosen to give analysts and trade journalists an insight into the production routine of a 400-employee mid-cap media house whose scientific and educational textbooks and database services address an international market.

At Print China in Dongguan from 10th to 14th April (Hall 3, Stand C1001), KBA will be unveiling a specially tailored version of its internationally successful medium-format sheetfed offset press Rapida 105 universal. Addressing the specific needs of many print companies, it combines proven, robust engineering with modern technologies and a level of automation guaranteed to appeal to all those users who handle primarily the straight printing of four, five and six-colour commercial and packaging jobs, with or without dispersion coatings, and are thus unwilling to invest in equipment which far exceeds the requirements of their usual business structure. The Rapida 105 universal exhibited in Donguan is to be available in four to six-colour versions, with and without an anilox coating tower and corresponding dryer installations.

It was officially launched on the market in December 2006: an automatically convertible perfecting capability for the Performa 74. Luthe Druck und Medienservice in Cologne has been putting it through its paces – and is keen as mustard.

The Koenig & Bauer (KBA) group will be exhibiting in Hall 5, Stand 77 at the Poligrafia show in Poznan from March 27 to 30. It is sharing a stand with its Polish and Czech subsidiaries, Warsaw-based KBA-Polska Sp. z o.o. and KBA-Grafitec s.r.o. from Dobruška. The KBA Performa 74, the B2 machine that is enjoying huge success in Poland, the Czech Republic and other East European countries, will be demonstrated several times a day at the show, printing on paper and card in the four-colour version with coating unit. There will also be a full range of literature on the extensive KBA printing press range for a wide variety of market segments.

KBA-Grafitec continues its regular meetings with potential buyers of the sheet-fed offset printing machines of the KBA Performa brand. The last such event was the Open House in the Artpress printshop in Timisoara, Romania, which took place on Friday, 9th February 2007.

Glory Moon, one of the leading producers of greeting cards and consumer paper products in Asia, invested in three new sheetfed offset printing presses of the Rapida and Performa series in 2006. The company was founded in Hong Kong in the 1960s and creates over 1,000 new products every year – greetings cards, gift packag-ing and other printed paper wares. Annual production accounts for some 25,000 tonnes of materials.

The KBA-Grafitec expedited to Turkey another KBA Performa 74 machine in the middle of January. Already, this is the seventeenth printing machine of the SRB2 format sold by Grafitec on the Turkish market since cooperation was established with the Mat Group distribution company. The printshop of the Mega Matbaa company has become the owner of a KBA Performa 74-5. The same machine was also installed in the Onur offset printshop in Ankara in the middle of January.

The printshop has received a letter. Andrzej Rębisz, the Manager of the Katowice Wy-Druk printshop, is taking out of an envelope a flyer showing the signs of surface refinement – the “art work” of another printshop – together with a letter from a desperate customer, who is hoping that the Wy-Druk printshop can print his order with better quality.

Two Rapida 74 five-colour B2 (28in) coater presses that recently came on stream at Nitoli Indústria Gráfica in São Paulo and Gráfica Adonis in Americana show that the new-generation, 18,000sph version launched at Drupa 2004 is also popular in Brazil. Both of these printing plants have been working with KBA sheetfed presses for a number of years.

KBA-Grafitec sold printing machines and services worth more than one billion crowns in 2006. The expansion of the KBA Performa printing machines sales to the printshops in Moravia also contributed to the sales revenue of over one billion crowns. Litera, Brko and Nosova tiskárna from Brno as well as Seritech from Šternberk were among those printshops located in the eastern region of the Czech Republic which installed printing machines produced in Dobruška before the end of the year.

The Litera printshop from Brno strengthened their production capacity in the final quarter of the last year with the new four-colour KBA Performa 66-4 printing machine of the SRA2 format. The Litera company has been investing purely in printing machines produced in Dobruška since 1994. At that time the printshop purchased a two-colour Polly 725 machine completed with a perfector. The machine has been reliably working up to the present day. The Litera owners as well as the company management particularly appreciate the good performance and price relation of the KBA-Grafitec printing machines. The Polly and Performa printing machines above all reliably cater for all the requirements resulting from the composition and character of the orders. “One of the advantages of the KBA-Grafitec printing machines is the guaranteed service and the spare parts available at a favourable price”, stated Vladislav Pokorný, MBA, the co-owner and director of the printshop.

The KBA-Grafitec, which has expanded into the European and overseas markets with the KBA Performa 74 and KBA Performa 66 printing machines, held a meeting and business consultations with their sales representatives for the European countries from 30 November to 1 December.