Offset Printing

Giant KBA presses on the advanc

With the exception of Africa, KBA's giant Rapidas have now shipped to every continent, with the most recent booking by Glama Pak in Sydney, Australia, which will take delivery of a Rapida 205 five-colour coater version in December

Wednesday 14. May 2008 - Glama Pak in Sydney orders Australia's first KBA Rapida 205

Since Drupa 2004 KBA has sold around 50 of its giant Rapida 185 and Rapida 205 sheetfed presses. Initially confined to European and North American printers of posters, POS displays, books and packaging, more recently they have also been discovered by printers in China, with the first Rapida 185 five-colour press arriving in Shanghai at the end of last year.

Now the giant KBA Rapida 205 – the world’s biggest sheetfed press – is coming to Australia, with Glama Pak ordering a five unit plus coater version for its Sydney production centre. Installation is slated for December with a start date of next February. Africa, home to jumbos of another kind, is now the only continent lacking this giant Rapida, but that is surely only a matter of time.

The new 205-centimetre (80¾in) wide behemoth is part of a $12m (US$11.3m) project which brings offset printing to the Sydney factory for the first time. Glama Pak director and shareholder John Wheeler says: “It is a major project, but a comfortable one. We have worked with KBA several times before as we have three of its large-format presses in Melbourne.”

When it came to the choice of press Wheeler says it was straightforward: “Essentially there is only one manufacturer that produces a two-metre-plus press. In addition the KBA large-format presses are highly specified with automated plate loading, colour control and interdeck drying in particular.”
Glama Pak works in the litho laminated corrugated packaging market, and produces displays, POS, posters and maps. It also prints on semi-rigid plastics. Wheeler says, “There is a need for a highly specified large-format press in Sydney. This includes a significant amount of screen-printed work that would benefit from a move to large-format offset.”
The $12m investment includes an increase in the size of its joint Glama Pak and Ace Displays Milperra factory by 50 per cent to 120,000 sq ft (11,000m²). It also includes a new large-format CTP, with four suppliers currently vying for the sale, a new Epson 11880 colour proofing solution, a new Bobst SPO 2.1 die-cutter and four new folder gluers, a pair each from Lamina and Bickers.
Glama Pak and Ace Displays are part of the Visy group.