KBA’s retrofit subsidiary PHS has won the contract to move a manroland newspaper press across Germany.

A 13-year-old four-web Geoman press belonging to Märkische Oderzeitung is to be moved from from Weingarten to the publishing headquarters in Frankfurt/Oder.

The deal includes comprehensive upgrades to the press – which consists of two four-high towers, folder and four reelstands – and console technology, and KBA’s PrintHouseService will work with EAE on the project.

Media house Märkische Oderzeitung publishes daily newspapers, advertising frees, and websites, belongs to Ulm-based Neue Pressegesellschaft, which in turn holds a half in the Ulm-Oberschwaben print centre in Weingarten, where the press has been in operation.

Parallel to the relocation, PHS perform an extensive overhaul, with a range of retrofits on the printing units and folder. The present PECOM system is to be replaced with an EAE production planning and press presetting system.

At the same time, the settings of the impression cylinders, the dampening and inking units and the ink ducts are to be optimised. The refurbished press will be brought in over the roof, without disturbing production on the other presses in the press hall, and is scheduled to come on stream at the beginning of 2014.

Märkische Oderzeitung management board chairman Andreas Simmet says the tailored retrofit solution will “firm up” the press for the future, “and will hopefully give us another eight to ten years of good service together with the other Geoman presses at our print centre in Frankfurt/Oder.”

PHS says its was the experience of engineers such as its head of system service division Harald Klein, which helped to convince the customer, as well as the proximity of service centres in Hamburg and Plauen, and the reputation of Fritz Torneden, who now supports KBA in the web press sector in the north of Germany from his Hamburg offices.