Newspaper & Mailroom

Triple wide and yet compact

The Cortina 6/2 components were conveyed to their final positions on a trolley

Monday 01. December 2008 - KBA Cortina 6/2 in place at DuMont Schauberg, Cologne

In the course of a longstanding association with KBA, German plant haulier Scholpp Montage has transported any number of presses. Even so, offloading and placing a new KBA Cortina 6/2 at prominent publishing house M. DuMont Schauberg in Cologne from 20 October to 26 November was no ordinary occurrence.

A loyal KBA customer for the past 175 years (!), M. DuMont Schauberg has followed up a long succession of conventional press lines with a model that is triple wide, highly compact and waterless to boot. So every effort was made to ensure that all went well.

Huge capacity, tiny footprint

While a maximum web width of 1,890mm (74.4in) makes the triple-wide Cortina for Cologne a giant among presses, its footprint is so compact that for Scholpp’s experienced fitters it was a relative lightweight. Because the towers can be split down the centre, no single transported unit weighed more than 30 tonnes (33 US tons) or so. And working conditions at DuMont Schauberg were so good that offloading and placing were completed without a hitch and bang on schedule.

The printing plant beside DuMont’s new premises in Amsterdamer Strasse was easily accessible with a low-loader and the press hall’s exemplary equipment included a 35-tonne overhead crane. So there was no need for the complex ramps, transport scaffolding or gantry cranes with cable winches required at some locations. All that had to be organised for offloading the four Pastomat RC reelstands, four Cortina towers and two folders was the punctual delivery of the relevant mobile cranes. Once the various items had been brought into the press hall on a machine trolley the printing towers were manoeuvred into position with a forklift truck and the aggregates placed with millimetre precision in the correct configuration on their steel substructure. A KBA team was on hand to carry out the actual installation.
The KBA Cortina 6/2 will print the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, the Express, the Kölnische Rundschau and other products at a maximum speed of 80,000 full-colour copies per hour. It can deliver 48pp copies in the Berliner format or 96pp copies in semi-tabloid near-A4 format. Press inauguration is scheduled for March 2009, by which time the carnival season – celebrated in Cologne with the exuberance befitting its prominence as an epicentre – will be over and the city on the Rhine can look forward instead to a new chapter in newspaper production.