KBA is king in large format

KBA claims to be the global market leader in supplying packaging printers with customized large format presses. It says they are exploiting the dramatic efficiency gains that large format can deliver: “depending on the size of the packaging, where three blanks would fit on a B1 sheet, a Rapida 142 or Rapida 162 can print as many as eight. As a bonus, LF printers can offer their customers the added value benefit of single source production.”

Since drupa 1995, KBA has shipped almost 900 LF presses with a total of around 7,000 printing units. Most popular choice is the Rapida 162a (340 installations), closely followed by the Rapida 142 (320), which is a favourite among packaging printers, as the print format is twice that of a B1 press. Over the past three years these have been joined by shipments of some 40 VLF Rapida 185 and 205 presses. Machines shipped between 1995-2000 averaged five printing and coating units, but this has since increased to six as the market has evolved. While there is still a demand for simple four and five colour presses, there has been a shift towards models with 10 or more printing, coating and drying units, and a high level of automation.

Just under 15 per cent of all big Rapidas have a perfecting capability, and for folding cartons or other special applications the configuration of choice is five or six colours or more with perfecting after the first or second print unit. This supports one-pass production of, say, blister packs with operating instructions on the back or folding cartons with assembly instructions or recipes on the inside.

KBA says large format presses have proved equally cost effective for niche products, for example, direct offset on corrugated sheets up to 1.7mm (6pt) thick. RoK, in St Ruprecht, Austria, recently commissioned a Rapida 142 six colour coater press which is used exclusively for this work.