For Sven Strzelczyk, vice-president for sales, KBA has plenty of untapped opportunity in the Middle East: a territory where the benefits of its technology are yet to be fully appreciated.
“We need to educate people about our advantage of printing both labels and packaging in the same machine,” he told Packaging MEA.
“With the growing market share of KBA in the region, we can see more of that in the future.”
Alex Najem, machinery sales manager for regional distributor Giffin Graphics, adds that these options will be showcased through “a couple of seminars and forums”.
KBA’s challenge in the MEA region from narrow-web presses stems from what Najem terms “strong competition on the price side”.
“To counter this obstacle, we are planning to educate our clients on how faster will be their return on investment by investing in a KBA press,” he said.
“KBA is technology driven and has its own cost. We sell technology. We sell very short make-ready times.”
History of innovation
The company’s solutions for packaging reflect a long-standing commitment to innovation, said Strzelczyk.
“KBA is the oldest printing manufacturer in the world,” he said.
“There were two brilliant engineers in the beginning of the 19th century… The first machine was the steam-driven cylinder press for printing the London “Times” in November 1814, 200 years ago. From that time forth KBA has tried to always be the leader in innovation, whether sheet-fed offset presses, double-size impression cylinders, designs with one unit for each ink. These have become generally accepted in the market.”
In recent years, with the shift towards shorter runs, KBA’s R&D has been focused on cutting costs, make-ready time, and waste, he added.
“We have differentiated ourselves always in solutions directed towards cutting costs in the make-ready process and we showed that at Drupa 2012 very well – we presented ourselves as champions in make-ready times,” he said.
“In packaging too, the print run length is getting shorter and shorter (around 5,000-10,000 impressions). In such a case, it is good to have a machine that prints 20,000 sheets per hour, as we can. However, for shorter runsquick job changes are essential. Only if the press is printing it’s giving you returns on your investment. Consequently we had to cut make-ready times to a few minutes.
“Here KBA offers unique automation solutions which help to reduce changeover time, waste, and human failures. In addition KBA offers inline sytems for a continuous quality control.”
In curing, he points to a progression towards a combination of LED and UV technology.
“We use a technology called HR – highly reactive – ink and drying technology,” he said.
“Our machines are fully compatible to this technology. The dryers have a plug-and-play mechanism where they can be exchanged and repositioned in the press rapidly. We consider HR-UV as a bridge technology. For the future we even more benefits for the user in LED-UV. Currently LED dryers are still very expensive but this will change with an increasing number of installations.
“We developed LED-UV together with the world’s leading supplier of UV- and LED-curing systems AMS – Air Motion Systems. This is a special energy-saving and cost-cutting technology because the LED technology is a cold technology. The temperature is not more than 25°C.
“LEDs have a very long life expectancy of up to 30,000 hours instead of a couple of thousand hoursfor the HR driers.. You also have the advantage with the LEDs that you can set them to the individual sheet width and even to the sheet length. An LED can even be switched on and off at the end and the beginning of a sheet.
“This technology is also very interesting to those who are concerned about green printing because the fewer photo-initiators you have, the fewer emissions you have. KBA believes in this technology and the first presses have also been sold in this technology.”
Focus on packaging
KBA sees key applications for all these innovations in packaging.
“Today 60-65% of our machines sold per year go to package printers, whereas other suppliers have a ratio which is completely vice-versa,” he said.
“Looking at the development over the last seven years from 2007 – when sheet-fed offset machinery had its peak in sales – till 2014, though the general market volume for new machines in commercial printing has shrunk considerably, we still see growth potential in packaging and we want to make use of that potential.”
For “universal” packaging printers with a diverse output, the firm has plenty to offer, he emphasised.
“The big players are concentrating on certain portfolio of jobs but we also have small and medium printers, who are obliged to be universal printers,” he said.
“They cannot choose their jobs. They have to offer everything from labels to carton packaging. KBA has a technical where it is not necessary to adjust the gripper bars for different substrates. KBA Rapidas have an universal gripper setting. So a printer can print labels in the morning and carton packaging in the afternoon with minimum make-ready time.”
Giffin will be demonstrating to the Middle East’s “price-driven” packaging printers how this versatility should influence their kit purchases, said Najem.
“The price of a narrow web machine is around 25% of the investment into an offset sheet-fed press that can handle both IML [in-mould-labeling] and cartons,” he said.
“In addition to that, we need an inline rotary die-cutter with the sheet-fed offset press, which is an additional investment – so it is due to the nature of the printer in the Middle East that we have been seeing less of this.”
But he is confident KBA has a strong case.
“We have customers printing both labels and carton packaging,” he said. “We can show this combination in our demo centre and we welcome investors to see our sheet-fed offset presses with inline rotary die-cutter that can be used for both IML and cardboard.”