manroland AG - manroland presses improve performance of Italian printing houses

Bella Italia has become even more beautiful – in particular, this applies to two northern Italian printing houses. This is where new manroland sheetfed presses took up operation. Grafiche Antiga now uses a ROLAND 700 DirectDrive, while Print Duemila installed a ROLAND 900. The new printing systems allow these customers to expand their production capacities.

Located roughly 50 kilometers northwest of Venice, Grafiche Antiga is one of northern Italy’s most prominent graphic arts industry operations. To increase its capacities, the printing house invested for the third time in a ROLAND 700, this time in an eight-color perfector press of the DirectDrive generation. It replaces a competitor’s press. To remain internationally competitive, Grafiche Antiga offers its customers a wide range of products that are entirely produced in-house. For its more than 1000 customers, Grafiche Antiga processes 6,500 tons of paper in approximately 10,000 print jobs annually, producing advertising and publication print products as well as packaging.

The ROLAND 700 DirectDrive press will considerably increase the output, especially for short runs and print jobs requiring a flexible printing press. Two years ago, the rapidly growing company with its 180 employees already invested in two ten-color ROLAND 700 HiPrint perfector presses. “We are very satisfied with both presses, which is why we decided to purchase another printing press of this series,” explained Flavio Zuin, managing director of Grafiche Antiga.

Its innovative DirectDrive system allows simultaneous plate changes and wash cycles. In addition, unused inking units can be disabled, which results in less wear, short downtimes, and inexpensive maintenance. Perfecting allows high-quality two-sided four-color production, which enables the cost-effective printing of short and very short runs.

Paper, cardboard, propylene: the ROLAND 900 processes it all
Print Duemila near Milan is pursuing its growth strategy with a new six-color ROLAND 900 with perfecting in format 6. The Italian printing company offers a vast variety of products: in addition to books, brochures and catalogs, Print Duemila also produces displays, playing cards, puzzles, folders, and advertising material. This not only involves printing on materials with various thicknesses, but in addition to paper, also on cardboard, corrugated and propylene foil. The company already employs a ROLAND 700 to its great satisfaction.

“We intend to use the new ROLAND 900 primarily for printing on propylene foil”, said Giancarlo Cagno and Diego Cagno, the managing directors of Print Duemila. Thanks to its QuickChange functions, the large format press is quickly ready for printing. An ink-repellent coating of the ink fountain surfaces reduces the time required for ink change by up to 50 percent. The QuickChange Coating system features two firmly installed hose and pump systems as well as two doctor blades, which ensure exceptionally quick coating change-over, for example from UV to dispersion coating. Non-stop solutions developed especially for packaging printing allow fast continuous production runs.

manroland AG is one of the leading printing systems manufacturer and the world’s market leader in web offset.

Webfed and sheetfed offset presses provide tailor-made solutions for publishing, commercial, and packaging printing – from brochures to newspapers with circulations running into the millions. A worldwide network of about 100 sales and service centers markets manroland’s own products and inkjet-based digital printing solutions from Océ as well as process compliant system components and pressroom products.

manroland is designing, planning, building, equipping, and commissioning sheetfed and web offset printing plants – from prepress through printing right up to finishing. The PRINTVALUE service portfolio offers added value with its four brands: manroland is a provider of customized 24/7 service and maintenance packages plus integrated services and training measures (printservices). The portfolio includes a certified range of pressroom products (printcom) as well as software products and workflow management systems (printnet). The company provides consultancy services covering all aspects of investment and building planning, organization, management, systems engineering and process optimization (printadvice).

In the 2010 fiscal year, manroland employed around 7,000 persons and generated sales of Euro 942 million with an export share of 80 percent.