KBA Installs First Zip'n'Buy at Hometown Daily, Sells First Commander CT

By: E&P Staff Koenig & Bauer AG has installed its first Zip'n'Buy perforator at the Main-Post, Wuerzburg, Germany. Headquartered in the same city, the press manufacturer developed the perforator technology several years ago.

Zip'n'Buy is a movable, non-driven blade that applies a perforated line down or across a newspaper page. Readers can use the perforated line to cleanly tear an item from a page without using scissors.

The blade can be automatically or manually positioned and controlled remotely. The device can be retrofitted onto KBA and non-KBA presses, and the quick conversion and absence of speed limitation permit "zipped" ads to be placed even in high-volume titles.

European department store chain C&A was the first advertiser to try out the technology. Its portrait-format ad in the Main-Post last month featured a competition entry form on the reverse side. On the day of publication, some 2,000 readers turned in completed forms at store locations, according to KBA.

KBA developed the technology to allow dailies to frame tear-out ads, coupons, and other collectible material, and to give advertisers a more direct way of measuring response to particular ads.

The Main-Post also was the pilot site for KBA's Commander CT press, a compact, conventional wet offset press with improved roller-type inking, ink keys and spray dampeners. But the new press model's first sale, recently announced, was to the Spanish daily Heraldo de Aragon, in Zaragoza.

The press will be configured with four KBA Pastomat RC reelstands, four four-high towers measuring 13 feet, and two KF 5 jaw folders. It replaces the original section of a singlewidth KBA Comet that was installed in the mid-1990s.

The Spanish newspaper's print operations handle some 250,000 copies of newspapers daily. Needing to expand capacity and increase color, it chose the Commander CT for its compact design and automation, including its automatic plate-changing systems, according to KBA.

In collect production mode, the doublewidth KBA Commander CT will have a maximum output of 40,000 128-page full-color tabloid copies or 64-page broadsheet copies. The first section is slated to go live next spring.

KBA launched the Commander CT to bring some of the benefits of its first compact model, the Cortina, to publishers not yet ready to make a move to that press' waterless, keyless and precisely temperature-controlled printing.

KBA incorporated some of the Cortina's "nonprocess-specific benefits" in the Commander CT, while at the same time emphasizing that that new press' compact design and high level of automation minimize, but do not eliminate, some process-specific drawbacks, such as fan-out.