Paarl Coldset and PrintHouseService in Close Collaboration

By: Press Release | KBA

The specialists from KBA subsidiary PrintHouseService (PHS) have worked together with technicians from Paarl Coldset in South Africa to get a disused manroland Cromoman 50/70 ready for day-to-day production.

The press, which had been in storage for several years, was fired up within a tight time frame. Expanding capacity was necessary to ensure the punctual delivery of newspapers printed in Pietermaritzburg following the takeover of Natal Witness Printing and Publishing Company by Paarl Coldset. After a successful relocation and commissioning, since November the rebuilt Cromoman has joined a KBA Comet from 2002 and extended in 2006.

Andre Smit, operations director at Paarl Coldset group in Johannesburg is pleased with the smooth and on-schedule production start-up: “We reached our ambitious goals perfectly thanks to the flexible and fruitful cooperation with the technicians from PHS.” Hans-Peter Schiller, PHS site manager: “With this challenging project in South Africa we have demonstrated with Paarl just what teamwork can achieve in such a short time. Considerable costs were saved by pairing our know-how with the experiences of the technicians from Paarl responsible for the disassembly.”

Africa’s leading media group

Paarl Coldset produces 342 million daily, Sunday and weekly newspapers a year at its plants in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Bloemfontein and Pietermaritzburg. This includes South Africa’s leading daily, the Daily Sun. 185,000 tons of paper are printed annually. Paarl Coldset is part of the Media24 group which publishes, prints and distributes newspapers, magazines and books. In the print arena this leading African media group also runs gravure, label and sheetfed offset printing facilities. Furthermore, Media24’s portfolio encompasses e-commerce and a raft of internet businesses.  

PHS: Competent service for the print industry

PrintHouseService offers a broad vendor-independent spectrum of services for the print industry, including prepress, press and mailroom technology. Harald Klein, head of business unit system service at PHS: “Our experienced technicians who have comprehensive knowledge in all service activities relating to printing presses won over the South African print professionals with this project. We’ll be only too happy to demonstrate our expertise once again in future projects.”