Report 36 d,e,f,s,i.qxd:Report - KBA

Sheetfed Offset | Innovation
The four Rapida 106 press lines were erected in pairs
10 Report 36 | 2010
Euradius Group pursues ambitious investment strategy in the Netherlands
Ramping up book production with
four Rapidas and flying job changes
The Euradius Group in the Netherlands has squared up to mounting competition with the purchase of four Rapida 106 press lines featuring KBA’s new
Flying JobChange automation module. This major capital investment was the final component in an ambitious project that united four printing plants under
a single roof in less than four months.
On 2 December 2009 the headline
on the title page of the
Meppeler Courant read “All
systems go at Ten Brink printing
plant!” For Meppel, which was
once the graphic arts capital of the
Netherlands, this was a major
event, safeguarding as it did around
260 jobs. Four printing plants were
merged to form one large-scale operation
in the record time of four
months. According to the newspaper,
the ‘icing on the cake’ was the
fact that this new entity had invested
heavily in new press technology:
four identical Rapida 106
four-colour perfectors for two-backing-two,
with DriveTronic SPC
dedicated plate-cylinder drives,
DriveTronic Plate-Ident pre-registration
and a software package for
switching flying plate changes to
printing units 1 and 3 while a
monochrome perfecting job is
printed on units 2 and 4, then vice
versa for the next job. The presses
are the first in the country to feature
this capability, which is a world
first.
Too many books left on the shelf
Ten Brink is a subsidiary of the Euradius
Group. One of the companies
that relocated to Ten Brink is
HooibergHaasbeek, a prominent
printer of literary books. “Books are
generally impulse buys, and that impulse
is stimulated by seeing the
book in the shop and leafing
through the pages,” says Ed van den
Ham, deputy sales director of
HooibergHaasbeek. “A book standing
on a shelf or lying on a pallet in
a warehouse is dead. In fact a book
on a pallet is not just dead – it’s
costing money.”
He continues: “Editions have
been declining for years, and pro-
“For us, flying job changes are key to addressing the growing demand
for shorter print runs and faster turnaround.” René de Heij
duction times have been steadily
shrinking.” Which is why, according
to Mr van den Ham, publishers are
busy searching for alternative business
models. “You can only afford
to maintain a large stock of books if
you produce a bestseller from time
to time.” Publishers today prefer to
print short runs rather than incur
the risk of having a dead weight of
books lying around.”
Flying JobChange
With Flying JobChange, the plates on
the printing units not required for the
current production run can be changed
‘on the fly’ and the press made ready
for the next job rapidly and more or
less automatically, with virtually no
down time. This substantially enhances
net press productivity.
The Rapida 106 with Flying JobChange is a
Formula 1 machine that demands a similar
level of performance on the part of the press
crew