KBA Takes Orders for Two Commander CT Presses

KBA has announced recent orders for triplewide and doublewide Commander CT presses.

At this week's IFRA Expo, the German pressmaker said it will build the triplewide for a longstanding Austrian customer, the family-owned Salzburger Nachrichten. The two-tower (48-page) automated press will be installed at the end of next year, replacing a 1990s-vintage Commander satellite press. Along with the flagship title, which circulates, in several editions, from 85,000 to more than 125,000 copies, depending on day of the week, the new press will print six regional full-color editions of the 80,000-circulation Salzburger Woche. Once a month, the weekly's circulation jumps to 185,000, when copies are delivered to every household in the district.

The Commander CT for Salzburg will have a maximum web width of 70.75 inches, cut-off of 17.2 inches, and maximum speed of 90,000 four-color copies per hour in straight production. Its two KBA Pastomat reelstands, with KBA Patras A automated reel logistics, will hold rolls up to 60 inches in diameter and 5/12, 7/12 and 11/12 ribbons for spadias. The towers will feature automatic page change, automated plate change, RollerTronic rollers locks, NipTronic bearing technology, fan-out compensation, automatic color-register controls, web center and pre-former guidance, CleanTronic blanket washing, inking-unit and dampener washing and central ink pumping.

The contract calls for two double turner bars, a folder superstructure with three formers and a KBA KF 5 jaw folder, as well as a skip slitter, gluing unit, ribbon, section stitchers, Zip'n'Buy perforator and four-page center-spread capabilities for more creative ad forms.

Controls will be at two KBA ErgoTronic consoles with EasyTronic waste- and time-saving press start-up and run-down functions and ABB's MPS production scheduling and presetting software.

Besides the nationally distributed broadsheet, readers in Salzburg province receive regional and local news in a separate stitched tabloid of 24 to 40 pages. The company also operates salzburg.com.

"We used to print the broadsheet and tabloid products separately and then insert the regional section in the Salzburg edition," Plant Manager Alexander Frommer said in a statement. "With the 6/2 Commander CT... we can print regional editions — which comprise a major proportion of our output — in one pass. And because edition and pagination changes are so fast on the CT, we can print the entire run on one press, whereas previously we had to use two."

Another family-owned publisher, Germany's Aachener Verlagsgesellschaft mbH contracted for two automated two-tower (32-page) KBA Commander CT four-page-across presses.

To be installed at the end of 2011, the new Commander will print the 17 local editions of the Aachener Zeitung and Aachener Nachrichten and two weeklies, Super Mittwoch and Super Sonntag, as well as various special publications, supplements and magazines. In cooperation with other dailies in the wider Rhine region, the publisher also is a member of the kalaydo.de regional advertising network.