As a leading member of WAN-Ifra's INCQC Star Club and a "truly satisfied" user of its first Commander press, the Aschendorff Group is the perfect customer.
Based in Münster, Germany, the publisher has been running its first Koenig & Bauer Commander CL at up to 100,000 copies per hour for a couple of years now, and is "particularly impressed" with how little waste it produces.
"This is incredibly important as we print 28 different local editions," says Thilo Grickschat, managing director of the printing centre.
So a plan to purchase a second two-tower press has gone ahead in record time and will come on stream in spring 2020. Technical director Thomas Wenge says following a comprehensive selection process before the purchase of the first press, "everything went much faster" for the second.
The "very highly automated" Commander CL will be the 26th sold in Germany, France, China and the USA.
Digital and webfed sales director Stefan Segger says the company's high-end newspaper presses are "still very much in demand".
Aschendorff's print origins go back more than 250 years, with 28 different local editions and a reputation for outstanding print quality, in which it leads the International Newspaper Color Quality Club's Star Club with 15 stars.
The site prints the region's highest-circulation dailies, the Westfälische Nachrichten and Münstersche Zeitung along with frees and supplements distributed by Anzeigenblattgruppe Münsterland. From the beginning of 2019, it is pooling media activities in a joint venture with Bielefeld-based Westfalen-Blatt Group, Westfälische Medien Holding.
The second Commander CL of two four-high towers, a KF 5 jaw folder and two Pastomat reelstands also includes a stripping station and Patras A reel-transport system. It will also have the automation modules including roller locks, inking unit and cylinder washing systems, fan-out compensation, colour measuring and control systems, colour and cut-off register controls, and automatic plate changing installed on the first press.
Pictured: The joint project team (from left): Mustafa Ugan (project manager Koenig & Bauer), Thomas Wenge, Thilo Grickschat, Stefan Segger, Markus Schrubba (production processes coordinator Druckzentrum Aschendorff), Herbert Kaiser (head of project management Koenig & Bauer), and sales manager Georg Fleder