A KBA press order announced at WPE in Berlin is the latest in a succession in which QI Press Controls registration has been specified.
AZ Medien business Mittelland Zeitungsdruck in Aarau, Switzerland, is to install a unique Commander CT press the maker believes would only have been possible with its compact tower system.
The double-width press makes use of two eight-high towers, a four-high tower, five reelstands and a jaw folder to produce 80-page newspapers at 45,000 cph.
Linking its printed products with online and mobile applications, the publisher is centralising production and hopes to gain additional contract work including high-volume retail catalogues.
The press is part of a investment totalling approx. 20m CHF in printing, finishing, distribution and other process steps which AZ Medien chief executive Axel Wüstmann says will pay off with cost savings and enhanced efficiency. It replaces the elder of two Wifag presses at the Aarau site, and is scheduled to start production in September 2014. KBA ErgoTronic consoles with modules for automatic press start-up and run-down will be integrated into existing ABB MPS production scheduling and Prime presets.
The installation is one of three on which KBA and the Dutch-based press controls system company continue an ongoing cooperation. The others are at Main-Echo in Aschaffenburg – which has ordered a three-tower Commander CL to go live late next year – and at Baden-Baden, Switzerland, where another Commander CT will anchor Badisches Tagblatt’s new 21 million Euros ($27m) printing plant project.
It will mainly print the 34,000 circulation daily and its four local editions, two freesheets and other periodicals. The highly-automated press will enable the publisher to deliver more topical news and reduce waste and labour costs.
A fourth KBA press – commissioned in May at Giessener Allgemeine in Germany – also uses QI Press Controls’ colour registration technology. The company prints about 55,000 copies of three regional titles on the new three-tower Commander CT plus supplements, frees and contract titles amounting more than a million copies a week.
Pictured: The Aarau press combines compact eight-high and four-high towers in a small volume