Chief executive Franz Kriechbaum leads a team taking new ideas from manroland Goss and partner groupwork at this year's ExpoPrint & ConverExpo 2022 in São Paulo.

The live show – from April 5-9 – is the opportunity to reassess technology for packaging and book printing, where web-offset now offers new opportunities, lower costs and the prospect of reduced CO2 emissions and the elimination of solvents.

That makes the German manufacturer’s modular Varioman the star of its show for flexible packaging, cardboard packaging and book printing. Ideas about redefining maintenance with Maintellisense include automated data preparation, while upgrading existing printing systems to today's process and quality standards with cross-model retrofit solutions will also be on the agenda.

manroland Goss web systems appear in cooperation with long-term sales and service partner groupwork Brazil at this year's show.

"We are excited to meet our customers again in person after the challenging pandemic period", says Kriechbaum. "Web offset in packaging printing is one of our main topics at ExpoPrint because we see significant advantages for the high-performance packaging printers of the future using this printing system. It's definitely worth taking a look beyond the technology horizon."

Apart from its Varioman f, c and b variants – which do not stand for the Bavarian football club but the foil (f:line), cardboard (c:line) and book printing (b:line) – manroland Goss will be ready to talk about its flagship Lithoman, which dominates the high quality and high volume commercial and book printing market worldwide.

Kriechbaum says there are several reasons why web offset technology is more sustainable than other printing solutions. “For example, sleeve cylinders and automation technology increase efficiency even for the smallest jobs, the use of electron beam curing offset inks leads to CO2 emission savings, and additionally, it offers protection against scratching and abrasion due to high rub resistance,” he says.

An additional important topic: 100 per cent solvent-free printing inks contribute to savings in explosion protection and exhaust air cleaning.

The data-driven Maintellisense platform – on the market for two years now – is also redefining customers' daily production routines. A press collects around 45,000 lines of logbook data within 24 hours, and this can be automatically evaluated and illustrated in transparent graphics. Specially programmed algorithms not only prioritise the error messages, but also establish important correlations between the events. This makes it clear, at a quick glance, where the intervention of a technician is required, avoiding unplanned machine downtimes at the best.

To digitise existing press installations, and operate competitively, upgrades provide working measurement and control systems.

“Often, when investment in a new machine is not yet intended, upgrading to the latest hardware and software on existing machines brings quality and productivity back to a profitable standard,” says Franz Kriechbaum. “This saves resources and makes the plant fit for future orders.”