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The Magazine for Muller Martini Customers Winter 2015

Online retailers revive print with attractively presented magalogs

Editorial

Muller Martini Panorama Winter 20152

E When it comes to sales nowadays, marketing professionals like to talk about the “customer journey”. The meaning of that is simple – the journey that a customer makes before deciding to purchase a pro-duct. It includes all the touch points through which a customer comes into contact with a brand, product or service ahead of the purchase, and there are more of them than ever before.

Alongside conventional touch points li-ke print ads and radio or TV commercials and more recent ones such as websites and web stores, a multitude of indirect touch points such as review sites, forums and blogs have become established, through which customers increasingly gather infor-mation, but which marketers cannot influ-ence directly. To meet the considerable challenge of being present at those multip-le touch points, retailers typically adopt an omni-channel strategy. That was the theo-ry. So what does it mean in practice?

Even companies that started out in e-commerce now recognize that a website or web store is not sufficient to accompany customers right along their “customer jour-ney”. It has been shown that the more touch points are used, the more likely the-re is to be a sale. That is where the classic

medium of print comes into play, in the form of magalogs – a cross between a ma-gazine and a catalog. Print seems to work particularly well for sensory and emotive product categories. As you can read in our feature on page 4 of this issue, lavishly pro-duced magalogs are today an established component in the communications mix of online fashion stores, with Zalando playing a pioneering role.

Net-A-Porter has followed suit, though by no means without thinking it through. The customer survey it commissioned sho-wed surprisingly clearly that female custo-mers would like a fashion magazine with content that can be shopped conveniently. Net-A-Porter listened to what it’s custo-mers want and created a magazine, which today has a circulation of 150,000 copies, in which high-class designer fashion is pre-sented in an opulent magazine that inspi-res its readers to buy. That finding is backed up by the research of the E-Commerce-Center Cologne (ECC Cologne), which we reported on in “Panorama” 2/14, showing that professional produced print products can awaken customer interest in a targeted way.

However, fashion labels are not the on-ly e-retailers that have discovered the effec-

tiveness of print media as part of the com-munications mix. The two online pioneers Airbnb and Uber, which are turning existing business models upside down, have ent-ered the print arena in order to create addi-tional touch points that establish brands even more firmly in customers’ minds and provide them with relevant information.

Established publishing houses, which are reluctant to see their business “poa-ched” by e-retailers, have naturally accep-ted the challenge. The reach of magalogs means that they are also attractive to ad-vertisers, which makes them direct compe-titors of conventional magazines. The pub-lishing group Condé Nast, for instance, is establishing a sales platform under Style.com in order to sell products via Vogue, GQ and Vanity Fair.

Whoever comes out on top, one thing is perfectly clear: despite the digital hype, print is an indispensable element of the communications mix. The fact that even die-hard e-retailers are venturing into print is the ultimate confirmation of what the graphic arts industry has known all along. That is all the more reason for us all to hold our heads up even higher in the market.

Kind regards,

Volker Leonhardt, Director of Sales and Marketing Muller Martini Print Finishing Systems AG

Print Creates Emotion and Boosts Customer Loyalty

Volker Leonhardt, Director of Sales and Marketing Muller Martini Print Finishing Systems AG

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Imprint

Volume 30Muller Martini “Panorama” EditorDr. Markus Angst [email protected] PublisherMuller Martini AGUntere Brühlstrasse 13 CH-4800 Zofingen, SwitzerlandPhone +41 62 745 45 75 Fax +41 62 751 55 50www.mullermartini.com

Publication frequencyAppears three times a year in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Chinese editions.

Reproduction with reference to source is permitted.

Printed in Switzerland.

Contents

3Muller Martini Panorama Winter 2015

neutralPrinted Matter

No. 01-15-589355 – www.myclimate.org© myclimate – The Climate Protection Partnership

PERFORMANCE

Friedrich Pustet GmbH & Co. KG came up with a master plan to handle books' decreasing run sizes.

With print (volume of EUR 25 mil-lion a year), Deutsche Bahn makes itself heard above the digital noise.

Grafotisak invested EUR 10 million in expanding its state-of-the-art machine lineup in this year alone.

ForumPrint boosts e-commerce – from catalogs to magalogs 4

Hardcover ProductionTong Run, Zhoushan – entry into industrial production 8

Gigo, Changchun – print set to generate the highest turnover 10

Innovative Companies Grafotisak, Grude – printed with Heidelberg and print finished with Muller Martini 12

Graphius, Ghent – growth as the strategic goal 16

Softcover ProductionNikkei, Tokyo – capturing the short-run market with the Alegro 18

iWORD, Sapporo – thick books are a market niche 20

Oberndorfer, Salzburg – 15% higher net output using the Corona C15 22

Pustet, Regensburg – much shorter setup times with the Alegro 25

Anjou, Angers – switching from offline to inline results in time savings of 50% 28

News  30

Newspaper Mailroom SystemsKraft-Schlötels, Wassenberg – the NewsGrip F sets two world records 32

Printing Presses Abar, San Giuliano Milanese – great confidence in Muller Martini services 35

MMServicesJouve, Mayenne – productivity up 15% with the CoronaCompact CC12 38

Multi Packaging – three-knife trimmer of a saddle stitcher is connected with a perfect binder 40

Digital SolutionsPreprensa, Mexico City – bottleneck removed thanks to the Pantera 42

Saddle Stitching SystemsFGP, Olomouc – the Primera is ideal for long and short runs 44

Lanarepro, Lana – tourism customers are increasingly relying on print 46

InterviewCarola Lammich – Deutsche Bahn is a major printing plant customer 48

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Print Boosts E-Commerce

For a long time it looked as though conventional catalogs would vanish from the media

landscape sooner or later. Yet, it is precisely e-commerce companies that have revived

the segment with their magalogs – a mixture of a catalog and a magazine. Such firms are

seeking to use print to present their products in a more emotive way and to increase customer

loyalty. Fashion retailers Zalando and Net-A-Porter, as well as platforms like Airbnb and Uber,

are pointing the way.


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5Muller Martini Panorama Winter 2015

E Online retailers are tentatively engaging in brick-and-mortar commerce. Market leader Amazon, for instance, is venturing into physical retail by opening its own branches. The aim is for brick-and-mortar retailers to be able to sell their products more easily on www.amazon.com and for customers of the online retailer to be able to pick up their goods in one of the stores on the day of making the order. Amazon has already developed a scanning device for retailers to provide access to stock levels.

Amazon is not alone in looking towards the offline world. Zalando also has several outlet stores in Germany for retailing prod-ucts such as slow sellers and B-stock items. Retail researchers are convinced that online retailers are increasingly mak-ing forays into the world of brick-and-mor-tar shopping. The Cologne Institute of Re-tail Research (IFH) anticipates that online retailers will open around 2,500 stores in Germany alone in the next five years. Ac-cording to the study, the figure currently stands at fewer than 100, so there is still some way to go.

Retaining Customers with Print MediaThe modest, but perceptible trend towards brick-and-mortar commerce is also reflec-ted in the communications of online retai-lers. Online stores are increasingly using offline channels, namely print media. Lavishly produced magazines are today a fixed component in the communications mix of online fashion stores in particular.

Long-term customer loyalty is a top priority for online retailers too since it is cheaper and more sustainable than con-stantly acquiring new customers – and print media are an effective means of forg-ing such loyalty. They lend themselves to

emotive product categories such as fash-ion, furniture, sport, food and wine. Print publications allow product-relevant infor-mation to be compiled and products to be presented in the relevant setting. By using suitable paper and sophisticated printing and finishing, print media underline the high quality of the products offered.

Present on All Channels The term “omnichannel marketing” provi-des a theoretical basis for the development described. All browsing and purchase de-cisions of the customer are considered as a whole. What that means is that the bene-fits of digital and conventional communi-cations and sales channels are linked to guide the customer through a variety of channels, from the product search through to completion of the sale, irrespective of when and, above all, where the customer takes the individual steps in the buying pro-cess. The (potential) customer is identified and addressed via all the touchpoints. That increases the likelihood of a sale, and also provides greater knowledge of the inter-ests and behavior of customers.

In a white paper on the significance of print media in the communication mix, the E-Commerce Center (ECC) Cologne con-firms the appeal of professionally designed print advertising and the boost they give to online retail (see also “Panorama” 2/14): “While a visit to an online or brick-and-mortar store is often preceded by specific interest in a product, advertising such as a catalog can awaken that interest in the first place.”

Wide Selection Presented in a High-Quality Magazine Setting For a long time the future of catalogs loo-ked unpromising. But then the unexpected happened – Zalando, one of the major pu-re-play online retailers, took the opposite approach all of a sudden and put a print product on the market to support its sales that can best be described as a magalog – a mix between a catalog and a magazine.

The Zalando world can be presented even more emotively in print. “We show selected product highlights, give styling tips and present current trends in combina-tion with lavishly produced photo spreads

and editorial content,” says Lena Elster, Editor-in-Chief of Zalando Magazine. “The magazine is an excellent opportunity to present our wide selection in a high-quali-ty magazine setting.”

The fashion retailer published its first print edition in March 2011. Today the magazine is published four times a year in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and France and has a total circulation of 1.5 million copies.

1 Magalogs are a prime example of how print and digital can be optimally linked.

2 To celebrate New York Fashion Week, Uber brought out its own magazine for passengers.

Featuring Augmented RealityZalando Magazine took the plunge into augmented reality in 2014. Arne Schepker, Zalando Vice President Brand Marketing, comments: “We’re building a bridge bet-ween the inspiring experience of reading our magazine and our online store in a no-vel way. Mobile end devices are increasing-ly important to our customers when shop-ping, so we want to provide them with an innovative way to delve into our selection.”

The feature includes 360-degree prod-uct views, an extended product selection for thematically relevant items, campaigns and “behind the scenes” videos. Currently Zalando is developing its magalog concept further.

Multichannel MarketingArvato subsidiary Mohn Media, a leading catalog producer, is also reaching out to end customers through multiple channels.

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app company Uber got the industry’s at-tention when it brought out its own maga-zine for passengers in celebration of New York Fashion Week. The publication titled “Arriving Now” is designed to provide rea-ders with general information about the city and upcoming events.

The content is undoubtedly too lengthy to be read during a single taxi ride, so pas-sengers are welcome to take the magazine away with them. It is not yet known wheth-er the magazine will come out regularly or only to mark special events, and whether there will be a separate edition in the other 70 cities where Uber is present across the world.

. . . . And for Drivers“Arriving Now” is not, however, the first print product that Uber has brought onto the market. This February Uber launched its “Momentum” magazine for drivers in the USA. The magazine comes out quarter-ly and is designed to forge a stronger rela-tionship between the company and its 150,000 registered drivers in New York City, Chicago, Ohio, Oklahoma and San Francisco.

Ryan Graves, Head of Operations at Uber, comments: “Our aim is for the mag-azine to strengthen our community of driv-ers by keeping them updated on new developments within the company.”

Customization and Personalization Are on the WayCatalogs have been personalized, customi-zed and compiled and distributed accor-ding to specific criteria for decades now. However, pure-play online retailers have

Andreas Kloss, Catalog Product Line Direc-tor at Mohn Media, believes that print com-munication awakens consumer needs. Kloss therefore urges online retailers to use catalogs or magalogs to address their cus-tomers in a targeted way and track their consumer behavior online.

“If a customer has sought out informa-tion about a product in an online store for some time and is then sent additional infor-mation by mail, they very often make an or-der.” The catalog engages with receptive customers in a “personal environment” in which they are at ease.

Preference for Printed MagazinesAnother e-retailer that has recognized that it is not sufficient simply to present the vir-tual version of a department store online is Net-A-Porter. Before the company laun-ched its own magazine, it surveyed 7,000 customers from around the world. The results showed that women want a fashion magazine with content that can be shop-ped conveniently. Surprisingly, the custo-

mers of the online retailer expressed their preference for print magazines.

Net-A-Porter set about creating its own magazine on the back of that survey, and brought one of the icons of fashion journal-ism on board – Lucy Yeomans, former chief editor of the British edition of “Harpers Bazaar”. The result is a publication that dif-fers little from glossy fashion magazines. The opulent, 200-page magazine retails for EUR 10 and has an impressive circulation of 150,000 copies.

Net-A-Porter is not in a position to gauge exactly what impact the magazine has on sales, but the effect is certainly positive. Moreover, the printed magazine contrib-utes significantly to the retailer’s branding. The magazine, incidentally, is largely fi-nanced by revenue from ads and purchas-es of the publication.

Uber: Print for Passengers However, it is not only fashion retailers that are recognizing the effectiveness of print as part of their communications mix. Taxi

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Publishing Companies Fight Back


How are established publishing companies reacting to the merging of editorial content and e-commerce? They are far from enthu-siastic, judging at least by the comment made by Julia Jäckel, Managing Director of Gruner+Jahr, to German news magazine “Der Spiegel”: “We won’t let ourselves be outdone by ruthless e-commerce compa-nies that buy up five editors and try to poach our core business.”

Condé Nast has taken up the gauntlet and is turning www.style.com into a retail platform on which the products reported on by “Vogue”, “GQ” and “Vanity Fair” can be shopped. The publishing company in-

tends to start out by acting as an interme-diary, rather than as an actual online retail-er. Yet numerous publishing companies already generate sales commission reve-nue through their online presence.

Austria’s News Publishing Group has proven that online also represents an op-portunity for smaller publishing compa-nies. It has been engaged for some time now in forming communities of readers in Vienna and not only providing them with a magazine in analogue or digital form, but creating a much more extensive offering to generate multiple linkages and revenue streams.

“One example that is already estab-lished today is our publishing group’s ‘Woman Shopping Day’, which now gen-erates as much turnover as a Saturday in the run-up to Christmas. That example shows the strength of the ‘Woman’ brand and the fact that it enables a totally differ-ent form of access to the market,” says Dr. Dr. Horst Pirker, Publisher and Board Chair-man of the News Publishing Group. “We bring those activities together in the ‘serv-ing, sharing and owning communities’ vision of the News Publishing Group.”

yet to fully embrace customization and per-sonalization, despite presumably having access to the necessary data. Doing so should be feasible with a well maintained data warehouse, augmented by a custo-mer relationship management solution. Both virtual and physical retailers apparent-ly have some catching up to do when it comes to data analysis and big data.

However, customization is just a matter of time in both the online and offline world, Andre Schütte from the Bremen-based agency Interwall told iBusiness.de: “Exten-

sively personalized catalogs are on their way, as are personalized websites and per-sonalized online stores.”

That will certainly encourage the trend towards content marketing and prompt even more catalogs to be turned into mag-azines, which will positively influence cus-tomers’ shopping and brand experiences. Online retailers appear to be the driving force behind that trend with their recogni-tion of the benefits of print as part of the communications mix.

1 Net-A-Porter’s opulent, 200-page magazine retails for EUR 10 and has an impressive circulation of 150,000 copies.

2 Net-A-Porter’s survey of 7,000 customers from around the world found that print magazines are preferred.

3 Zalando Magazine is published four times a year in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and France and has a total circulation of 1.5 million copies.

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Hardcover Production

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Entry into Industrial Production with the Diamant and the Ventura

For years Tong Run Printing Center in the Chinese city of Zhoushan produced its hardcover

books manually or semi-automatically. It entered industrial production by investing in a Diamant

MC 35 bookline and a Ventura MC book sewing machine. The company increasingly supplies

to the private sector as well as state agencies.

E Tong Run Printing Center is unique in China’s graphic arts industry in two re-spects. First the company is led by a wom-an, General Manager Xie Hai Mei, which is extremely rare in Chinese printing plants. “We recently has a gathering at our site of several printing companies and I was the only woman there,” says Xie Hai Mei with a grin.

Second, the semi-state-owned compa-ny sets out to provide employment to dis-abled people. That poses a considerable

challenge, especially when it comes, for in-stance, to demonstrating the functioning of a machine to deaf-mute operators.

Simple Operating PhilosophyHowever, Xie Hai Mei believes that the four Muller Martini print finishing systems in-stalled at Tong Run Printing Center have two major advantages in that regard. “First, they can be operated easily via the touch-screen. Second, they all have the same op-erating philosophy, which makes it easier

for our machine operators to switch from one system to the other.”

Automation has gained in importance at the company, which was founded in 1996 by Xie Hai Mei herself, since hardcover products until recently were produced manually or semi-automatically. The instal-lation of a Diamant MC 35 bookline and a Ventura MC book sewing machine in place of a local solution therefore brought con-siderable change, not only for the 50 em-ployees, but also to the company’s produc-


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1 Xie Hai Mei, founder and General Manager of Tong Run Printing Center: “We aim to further extend our position in the private sector.” Left: Stephen Liu; right: Tony Liao (both Sales Managers at Muller Martini China).

2 Hardcover books are Tong Run Printing Center’s core segment.

3 Tong Run Printing Center’s employees value the easy operation of the Muller Martini systems (pictured is the Ventura MC book sewing machine).

4 Production Manager Ye Shi Dong is also a machine operator at the Diamant MC 35 bookline.

tivity. “Demand for hardcover books had increased to such an extent that we had to look for a machine solution not only to boost our productivity, but also to enhance the quality of the end products and to meet the increasingly tight deadlines,” explains Xie Hai Mei.

Hardcover as Core Segment . . .Indeed, hardcover books, whose signa-tures are gathered at a stand-alone Muller Martini gathering machine, which is like-

wise new, are Tong Run Printing Center’s core segment. The average run size is 2,000 copies, with runs ranging from 300 to 5,000 copies. Large numbers of books on local history in particular are produced in Zhoushan, both for the government and for private publishing companies.

Tong Run Printing supplied predomi-nantly to state agencies for many years, but its customers increasingly include private publishing companies. “We aim to use the new, state-of-the-art Muller Martini sys-tems, which we are fully satisfied with, to further extend our position in the private sector,” says Xie Hai Mei.

. . . Supplemented by Saddle StitchingThe same applies to saddle stitched prod-ucts, which Tong Run Printing Center like-wise produces using a Muller Martini sys-tem – the Presto E90. Stitched products for various government agencies still account for the majority of the products produced. However, commercial printing for private

companies and the retail trade is increas-ing in volume. “That makes me optimistic about the future of our company,” says Xie Hai Mei.


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Hardcover Production

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Print Set to Take the Top Spot

Gigo International’s investment in a Diamant MC 35 bookline marks its entry into the

hardcover segment. The company, which is located in Changchun, a Chinese metropolis

with some eight million residents, also has plans to publish its own books in the future.

E Advertising still accounts for the largest share of the turnover at the multimedia company Gigo International, which was founded in 1991 and employs some 700 people. Just over half its employees work in print and print finishing, which account for the second largest share. “However, our firm aim is to reverse that order. We want print to take the top spot in the future. We’re confident we can attain that goal since we’re investing a lot in print and print finishing,” says Qiao Liangqi.

The General Manager also has his sights set on another target. “Currently we’re among the top three graphic arts compa-nies in northeast China, but we aim to be-come the absolute market leader.”

Hardcover Goes In-HouseEntry into the hardcover segment is set to help the company reach both those goals. Until now Gigo International concentrated on softcover production and saddle stitch-ing in print finishing, and outsourced the production of hardcover books.

However, in a few weeks’ time, a new Muller Martini Diamant MC 35 bookline will be installed at the state-of-the-art pro-duction site in Changchun, which boasts a company restaurant, comfortable recre-ation rooms and its own gym.

“We decided on an in-house solution owing to increasing customer demand for hardcover products,” explains Qiao Liangqi.

Diamant MC 35 Plus the GranitQiao Liangqi explains that there were two main reasons for choosing the Muller Mar-tini Diamant MC 35. “First, we’ve had ex-cellent experiences with the Bolero and the BravoPlus in recent years, so we have great confidence in Muller Martini’s systems. Second, our customers have high stan-dards when it comes to end products, so we’re also exacting when it comes to our machine suppliers.”

The General Manager took advantage of the opportunity to see the bookline, which runs at 2,100 cycles per hour and has a wide size range, live in action at the sites of several Muller Martini customers. He also studied the Granit three-knife trimmer,


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1 Qiao Liangqi (left), General Manager of Gigo International, is geared up for the (hardcover) future of his innovative company. Right: David Chen (Sales Manager at Muller Martini China).

2 Gigo International uses the Bolero perfect binder to produce company brochures and operating manuals for the numerous car makers in Changchun.

which supplements the new equipment. “Hardcover products require extremely high trim quality, so the Granit is the per-fect fit for the Diamant,” emphasizes Qiao Liangqi.

Digital Products on the IncreaseGigo International, which operates six Hei-delberg sheet-fed offset printing presses, decided on the short-run version of the Dia-mant not least because digital printing, with its short runs, is gaining in importance at the company owing to the commission-ing of an HP Indigo 5500. “That’s why we need print finishing systems that can be changed over quickly and conveniently,” says Qiao Liangqi.

That is also true of the Bolero perfect binding line, which was installed as a sec-ondhand system in 2014. Featuring PUR and hotmelt, a Solit three-knife trimmer and a CB 16 book stacker, it is used to bind products with run sizes of between 1,000 and 500,000 copies. The products increas-ingly include company brochures and op-erating manuals for the automotive indus-try, since many car makers are located in Changchun.

Own Books on the HorizonThe media general contractor, which spe-cializes in exhibitions and trade fairs, still prints and finishes all its products for out-side customers across China. However, Qiao Liangqi notes that the innovative com-pany has yet a third goal for the future: “We have plans to publish our own products.

We see great potential in China on the mar-ket for children’s books in particular.”

www.gigo.com.cn

3 Gigo International also relies on a Muller Martini solution for its saddle stitching needs – the BravoPlus.

4 Qiao Liangqi and David Chen sign the contract for the new Diamant MC 35 bookline featuring the Granit three-knife trimmer.


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Innovative Companies

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Grafotisak: Printed with Heidelberg and Print Finished with Muller Martini

After commissioning a new XL printing press from Heidelberg and several print finishing

systems from Muller Martini, Grafotisak in Grude (Bosnia and Herzegovina) plans to

increase its annual book production from the current 18 million copies to 25 million copies.

Its investments this year include a second Muller Martini Diamant MC 60 bookline,

as well as four Ventura MC book sewing machines.


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E Grafotisak has invested the impressive sum of EUR 10 million in expanding its ma-chine lineup in this year alone. The lineup includes a Heidelberg Speedmaster XL-162 with eight colors and the rare size of 162 cm. Just a few printing presses of that type have been installed worldwide so far, and Grafotisak’s is the only one that was specifically designed for large-sized book printing.

From 18 to 25 Million BooksThe commissioning of that additional Speedmaster XL to join two Heidelberg B1 8-color machines with a size of 106 cm, 105, 5+L & 75 5+L has led to a significant increase in printing volume. Grafotisak was established in 1983 by Stipan Vranješ as a one-man business with a small printing and cutting machine in the town of Grude, which has around 15,000 residents, near the border with Croatia. It has gone from producing some 13 million books in 2014 to 18 million this year.

“Our aim is soon to reach 25 million cop-ies with the new machines,” says the son of the company founder, Marko Vranješ, Chief Production Officer.

In 2015: Three Investment PhasesIn order to handle the additional printing volume, Grafotisak has invested not only in an extra, completely new hall (going from 1,500 m2 of production space in 1995 to 29,000 m2 today!), but also in several new print finishing solutions. The company commissioned an Alegro A7 perfect bind-ing line at the beginning of this year, a Ven-

turaConnect system with two Ventura book sewing machines featuring the TWEEN option in the middle of the year, and will commission an additional Connect system with two Ventura MC 200 ma-chines, a Bolero B9 perfect binding line and a Diamant MC 60 bookline at the end of the year.

“We prefer to have a long-term partner-ship with our system suppliers,” says Sti-pan Vranješ. “That’s why we always rely on Heidelberg for printing presses and Muller Martini for print finishing systems.”

Alegro: 2.5 Million Books in Four MonthsThat, however, does not mean that the company founder and his two sons, Marko and Nikola (Nikola is the company’s Chief Commercial Officer), did not carefully ana-lyze the technical details of new machines during the evaluation phase. Grafotisak, for instance, opted for the Alegro, which pro-duced an impressive 2.5 million books in its first months of operation, because “like the Ventura, which we’ve had excellent ex-periences with, the Alegro features Motion Control Technology, which provides for even shorter make-ready times and even higher quality of the end products,” ex-plains Marko Vranješ.

And before Grafotisak signed the pur-chase contract for the new Bolero, the three business managers saw for them-selves the benefits of the Muller Martini perfect binder, which has set new stan-dards in the mid-performance range, at the Muller Martini Bookbinding Academy in

1 Its three VenturaConnect integrated book sewing systems save Grafotisak time, costs and space.

2 Company founder and Chief Executive Stipan Vranješ (second from left): “We prefer to have a long-term partnership with our system suppliers.” Beside him are his two sons Marko and Nikola (Chief Production Officer and Chief Commercial Officer), and left Željko Pokupec (Sales Manager at Muller Martini Zagreb).


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Innovative Unternehmen

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1 Machine operator Simun Colak appreciates the short make-ready times of the new Alegro perfect binder.

2 The experienced machine operator Marko Radic (left) shows apprentice Mijo Jurcic the ropes of the newly installed Ventura MC 200.

Switzerland and at a leading Swiss book-bindery.

Frontero for FlapsLike the Alegro, the Bolero is coupled with a Frontero front trimmer for the more cost-effective production of flap brochures. “Until the end of last year, we required two passes for our annual volume of a million flaps using the Acoro,” says Marko Vranješ. “Now we produce in a single pass, and have naturally become more competitive.”

Speaking of passes, the production of thread-sewn books has also become con-siderably more cost-effective thanks to the networking of six Ventura MC machines with three Connect systems each. “The in-tegrated book sewing system feeds the signatures directly from the gathering machine to the Ventura, making pallets re-dundant, which naturally saves us time, personnel costs and space,” says Stipan Vranješ.

Stable Run SizesHigh productivity is of particular impor-tance to Grafotisak, since its average run

size is roughly 7,000 copies per title for both softcover and hardcover books. De-spite general market trends, that number has stabilized over the past two years, after dipping temporarily to 6,000 in 2012. “As we’ve observed, our customers are clearly convinced that high-quality print products can be successful in the market,” says Sti-pan Vranješ.

Stipan Vranješ is not anticipating major changes in the run sizes in the coming years. However, one thing has changed, he explains. Similar looking books with slight-ly differing editions are increasingly com-mon. The Muller Martini gathering ma-chines lend themselves to ensuring the correct sequence of signatures in such cas-es thanks to the Asir 3 optical image and barcode recognition system.

Existing Customers are Ordering MoreLike the average run sizes, the customer structure has not changed significantly at Grafotisak, which employs 210 people in production in Grude, in recent years. Some 95 percent of its books are exported, with Scandinavia being the chief destination for

hardcover products and Germany and France for softcover output.

The significant growth is due less to Gra-fotisak constantly acquiring new custom-ers, than to the fact that the company is be-ing assigned more and more jobs by its existing customers, some of which it has been working together with since the establishment of the company, explains Marko Vranješ.

Eye-Catching ProductsWhat has changed is that customers have higher quality expectations, says Marko Vranješ. He believes that it is not primarily related to customers seeking to compete against electronic media with attractive print products. “The impression I have is rather that they want their products to be more eye-catching in order to compete with other print products.”

Marko Vranješ therefore places particu-lar emphasis on the top quality of the print-ing and finishing of Grafotisak’s books. Muller Martini print finishing systems con-tribute significantly to that, he says. “On a scale of 1 to 10, I’d give them a 10.”

3 The Grafotisak Group has its own fuel station in Grude.

4 After commissioning a Diamant bookline in 2012, Grafotisak is now commissioning a second one.


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Between 2006 and 2015 Grafoti-sak invested almost EUR 13 mil-lion in numerous print finishing systems from Muller Martini. The six gathering machines, for in-stance, have a total of 118 stations for the Acoro, Alegro and Bolero perfect binders and for the three VenturaConnect book sewing systems.

Perfect BindersE Acoro A7 with a 1571 gather-

ing machine (24 stations), criss-cross delivery, endsheet feeder, book block feeder, PUR/

which can be long ones. In addition to 210 employees for pre-press, printing and print finishing in Grude, Grafotisak employs an-other roughly 300 people in its other bu-siness units in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia. Grafotisak’s complete range is sold in large sales centers in Zagreb, Osijek, Rijeka and Split (Croatia), as well as in Belgrade (Serbia).

www.grafotisak.com

Grafotisak has Relied on Muller Martini Systems for Nine Years

VPN nozzle, mull feeder, cool-ing section, Merit S three-knife trimmer, and CB 16 book stacker (2007).

E Alegro A7 with a 3694 gather-ing machine (15 stations), book block feeder, book data center (BDC), PUR/VPN nozzle, mull feeder, cooling section, split-ting saw, Solit three-knife trim-mer, Frontero front trimmer, and CB 18 book stacker (start of 2015).

E Bolero B9 with a 3696 gather-ing machine (18 stations), book block feeder, PUR/VPN nozzle,

mull feeder, cooling section, splitting saw, Orbit three-knife trimmer, Frontero front trim-mer, and CB 18 book stacker (start of 2015).

BooklinesE Diamant MC 30 (2006–2012).E Diamant MC 60 (2012).E Diamant MC 60 (end of 2015).

Book Sewing MachinesE VenturaConnect with a 3693

gathering machine (16 stations) and 2 Ventura MC 200 ma-chines (2014).

E VenturaConnect with a 3694 gathering machine (30 stations) and 2 Ventura MC 200 ma-chines featuring the TWEEN option (middle of 2015).

E VenturaConnect with a 3694 gathering machine (15 stations) and 2 Ventura MC 200 ma-chines (end of 2015).

Saddle StitchersE Prima (1998).

Core Business: BooksBooks remain the cornerstone of Grafoti-sak’s business, and the company has had its own stand at the Frankfurt Book Fair for years. The family business entered the hardcover segment in 2006 with a Muller Martini Diamant 30 and has enjoyed mete-oric success in that field. It replaced its first bookline with a Diamant MC 60 in 2012. At the same time, Grafotisak also invested in a backgluing machine to enable it to better satisfy its customers’ high requirements with regard to book blocks. However, the family business from Bosnia and Herzegov-ina is also successful in three additional print segments:E cardboard box production (for the phar-

maceuticals, cosmetics and tobacco in-dustries)

E security paper printing (postage stamps and revenue stamps, often with holo-grams), and

E ring binders.

15,000 Office ItemsThe company also has two stationery shops in Grude, Sarajevo, Tuzla and Banja Luka, in which as many as 15,000 items, from simple pencils to exclusive Pelikan ballpoint pens through to lever arch files, hole punches and staplers are sold. Since that product division is also booming, Gra-fotisak recently built a completely new 4000 m2 warehouse in the capital of Sara-jevo.

Grafotisak in Grude also boasts its own fuel station, where the company’s 30 own trucks can fill up before their journeys,


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Innovative Companies

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“Our Strategic Goal is to Keep on Growing”

Graphius has modernized its complete machine lineup for

print finishing by investing in state-of-the-art solutions from

Muller Martini at its plant in Ghent (Belgium). It now boasts

two Primera saddle stitchers, two Alegro perfect binders,

two Ventura MC book sewing machines with the Connect

system and a Diamant MC 60 bookline with a Ribbon

inserting machine.

E “There are two key points for our cus-tomers today,” says Philippe Geers, Man-aging Director at Graphius, a holding com-pany that owns six Belgian printing plants. “First, they have exacting quality require-ments. Second, the lead times for their jobs are shorter and shorter.”

Four “Most Beautiful Books”It is testament to the superb quality of the books produced by Graphius that this

summer four of the twelve books (out of a total of 104 entries) that were awarded the coveted Prix Fernand Baudin for the most beautiful books in Brussels and Wallonia by a distinguished jury were Graphius products.

Several state-of-the-art Muller Martini solutions at the plant in Ghent ensure in all areas of print finishing ensure that the Graphius products are of optimal quality and can be delivered promptly.

Primera, Alegro, Diamant, Ribbon, Ventura, Connect …E Three older Muller Martini models have

been replaced by two Primera machines for the saddle stitching of magazines and (company) brochures with an aver-age run size of 3,000 copies and maxi-mum run size of 60,000 copies. “That has increased our net output by around 25 percent,” says Philippe Geers.

E The company has replaced two older Muller Martini perfect binders and a per-fect binder of another manufacturer by two Alegro machines for the softcover production of high-quality catalogs, magazines and coffee table books, whose run structure is similar to that of saddle stitching. “Its Motion Control Technology is particularly beneficial for us because setup times are increasing-ly important owing to decreasing run sizes,” emphasizes Philippe Geers.

E For the production of hardcover books, many of them in the art segment with an


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average run size of 1,000 to 1,500 cop-ies and a maximum of 100,000 copies, Graphius has replaced the bookline of another manufacturer with a Diamant MC 60, whose output is twice as high.

E In thread sewing (which has a similar run structure to the bookline), Gra phius has commissioned a second Ventura MC to join its existing one, and inte-grated them both with the VenturaCon-nect system. The signatures are gath-ered, stacked and then processed into thread-sewn book blocks, all in a single pass.

Growth as a Strategic GoalThe integrated book sewing system is a prime example of how Belgium’s largest offset printing company, which has it roots in Drukkerij Geers Offset, which was found-ed by André Geers in 1928 in Oostakker near Ghent, has stepped up its productivi-ty. “Since we don’t need a buffer between the gathering machine and the two book sewing machines, we save a huge amount of time,” says Philippe Geers, grandson of the company founder.

That higher productivity in turn has led to thread sewing greatly increasing in pop-ularity among the customers of Graphius. That explains why the two Ventura ma-chines at the Graphius factory in Ghent, which employs 220 people in three shifts, run around the clock, seven days a week. “One of our strategic goals is to keep on

1 Graphius is enjoying growth under the leadership of Managing Director Philippe Geers (left). Right: Production Director Christophe Verhaegen.n.

2 The two Ventura book sewing machines, which are integrated in a Connect system, produce around the clock at Graphius.

3 Two new Primera saddle stitchers allow for 25 percent higher net output than the three older models that have been replaced.

4 Graphius commissioned two Alegro perfect binders. One is typically used solely for softcover products, while the other is used as an inline backgluing machine for the Diamant bookline.

growing,” says Philippe Geers, comment-ing on the welcome development.

Flexible Machine OperatorsThe two Alegro machines also enable an optimal production flow at Graphius, which prints 70 percent of its products for cus-tomers in Belgium and the remaining 30 percent for customers in the Netherlands, France and Great Britain using eight sheet-fed offset printing press and three digital systems. One perfect binder is typically used solely for softcover products, while the other is used as an inline backgluing machine for the Diamant bookline. “How-ever, in a pinch they can each be used as a back up for the other machine,” says Pro-duction Director Christophe Verhaegen.

Their operators can also switch from machine to machine. “That’s a major ad-vantage of all systems having the same manufacturer,” stresses Verhaegen. “The

fact that the machines have the same inter-faces makes life much easier for our oper-ators. In addition to our long-term partner-ship, that’s one of the main reasons why we opted for Muller Martini for all our new systems.”

www.graphius.com


Softcover Production

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Nikkei Conquers the Short-Run Market with the Alegro

Nikkei Printing, a leading print services provider based in the Japanese capital of Tokyo,

is reinforcing its position in the short-run segment with a new Muller Martini Alegro

perfect binder.

E Not many printing houses boast a build-ing as impressive as the Tokyo-based company – the entrance lobby of Nikkei Printing's four-floor, 11,000-sqm, seven-year-old, futuristic plant in Tokyo has often been used as a set for TV productions. With its 430 employees, Nikkei Printing is a lead-ing player in Japan’s graphic arts industry.

27 (!) Printing PressesNikkei Printing, which is not to be confused with the large Nikkei Newspaper publish-ing company and recently made headlines with its purchase of the Financial Times, has always been forward-looking. The company, which was established by the fa-ther-in-law of its current President and CEO

Kazutoshi Yoshimura, started out with typesetting as its sole focus. Today, howev-er, it has four major arms to its business: teaching materials, catalogs and broch-ures, B2B products and publishing.

Its 270 employees keep no fewer than 27 sheet-fed offset presses humming along 24 hours a day at three plants. A further 160

Kazutoshi Yoshimura (right), President and CEO at Nikkei Printing: “The Muller Martini Alegro is the perfect solution for us because it meets the needs of the market“. Right: Bindery Manager Yuji Yamamoto.


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sales, administrative and production con-trol employees work at the company’s head office in Tokyo.

In-House Print Finishing for 18 YearsIn 1997, the company decided to bring print finishing, which it had previously out-sourced, in house. It hired Yuji Yamamoto as bindery manager for that very purpose, a position he still holds today. Company President Kazutoshi Yoshimura recalls: “We were producing an increasing amount of work. In order to meet the demands of the market the obvious thing to do was to bring print finishing in house. Further ad-vantages of taking that step were quality control and shorter lead times, both of which are increasingly important.”

30% of Runs Below 1,000 CopiesThe decision proved to be the correct one for Nikkei. Thanks to performing print fin-ishing in house, the company was able to provide new production benefits to its cus-tomers and generate further growth. Nik-kei’s softcover specialties are school text-books and reference books – many of which are produced in short runs. Although the company also produces jobs of up to 100,000 copies, 70% of all its jobs are runs with below 3,000 copies. “30% even have fewer than 1,000 copies,” says Mr.

Yoshimura. As a result, the perfect binder is changed over several times a day.

In order to meet the requirements of that run trend, Nikkei added a new Muller Martini Alegro perfect binder with a six-sta-tion gathering machine, Asir 3 signature scanning system, Solit three-knife trimmer and Book Data Center (BDC) to its machine line-up in June. “With its intelligent ma-chine design, the Alegro is the ideal solu-tion for our run structure,” stresses Mr. Yo-shimura. “It impresses with its very short make-ready times and high productivity. Thanks to the high degree of automation, we’ve been able to halve the number of op-erators from four to two, thereby reducing our costs considerably.”

Long-Standing PartnershipIn Japan most books are softcover, with a dust jacket and a further promotional wrap. However, there is a general downward market trend, so Nikkei is looking to tap in-to new segments, in particular the short-run market.

“The Alegro is the perfect solution for us because it meets the needs of the market. We’re also delighted that the machine comes from Muller Martini, who we’ve worked with for many years with great success. That ensures that the technology, engineering and service support are all

top notch,” says Mr. Yoshimura enthusias-tically.

“Opportunity for Our Customers”Bindery manager, Mr. Yamamoto, is also impressed. “The Alegro plays a key role in our print finishing. It fulfills that purpose extremely well, enabling our company to continue to grow.”

Company President, Mr. Yoshimura, is convinced that its customers will make in-creasing use of the short-run opportunities. “We’re adapting to the new market situa-tion together with them. The partnership with Muller Martini and Alegro technology enable Nikkei to do exactly that, ensuring that our company will continue to grow even under the difficult market conditions right now,” he says.

Thanks to the Alegro’s advanced technology, Nikkei has been able to reduce the number of operators at the perfect binder from four to two.


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Thick Books Represent Market Niche

iWORD, which is based in the Japanese city of Sapporo, has entered PUR perfect binding

with the new Bolero from Muller Martini. The new technology is of particular benefit to the

long-established company since it is specialized in the production of ultra-thick books.

E Not many graphic arts companies in Ja-pan, or elsewhere in the world for that mat-ter, can boast a board with a majority of women and a clear commitment to equal opportunities for women and the disabled alike, but the successful iWORD company certainly can.

Successful SpecializationThe company, which is based in Sapporo in the foothills of the well-known Japanese ski region, employs 220 people and is one of the biggest printing providers on Japan’s northern island. It specializes in the pro-duction of high-quality books, and a good 60 percent of its jobs come from publish-

ers in the capital of Tokyo located 1,200 ki-lometers away.

“We believe that by working in a niche we can become the experts in that field,” says President Isao Kinoguchi. “There are more than enough full-service providers, but not many capable of producing the products that we do.”

1,000 Pages and MoreThe specialization began when the compa-ny, which focused on typesetting, hired a young man in 1986 and sent him to Tokyo to train in text data management. Soon af-ter he returned, iWORD received a request to print the Japanese “Who’s Who”. It

went on to win the job, and still prints the publication today. Medical books, science books and specialist books followed, es-tablishing iWORD’s claim to this niche.

This niche means that iWORD often produces thick books containing 1,000 or more pages. The company recently began using a Bolero perfect binder from Muller Martini for that purpose.

Entry into PUR Binding“The Bolero has enabled us to enter PUR binding,” says Kinoguchi delighted. “We knew that this would allow us to offer our customers the products that they want. For us, it was important to have the right tech-


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1 iWORD President Isao Kinoguchi (left): “We produce Japan’s highest quality books.” Right: Director Matsuko Osawa – both holding an ultra-thick book bound using the new Bolero.

2 From left: Reiko Suzuki (Works Manager), Koei Akemoto (Bookbindery Manager) and Yuji Hamamura (Sales Manager Muller Martini Japan) in front of the new Bolero line at iWORD in Sapporo.

nology to enter the PUR market, because top quality is our priority. After assessing the market, we came to the conclusion that the Bolero satisfies our needs not only in terms of quality, but also of efficiency and productivity, and equally meets our demands and those of our customers, since we produce Japan’s highest quality books.”

The first job that iWORD produced us-ing the new Bolero was a 928-page book. “Ring binder holes were pre-punched into all the pages, so anyone could see if they didn’t line up completely accurately, but they did.”

Long-Standing PartnershipiWORD has worked together with Muller Martini since 1975, when it installed its first Normbinder perfect binder. Since then the company has repeatedly relied on solutions from the Swiss machine manufacturer. “Muller Martini has played an important part in the success of this company,” stresses Kinoguchi.

Another reason that the company decid-ed to invest in the Bolero was operational safety, says Kinoguchi. “Many our bindery staff are disabled, so we needed to know they would be safe around the binder, Muller Martini was able to show us that they would be.”

Three Golden RulesMr Kinoguchi and the rest of the iWORD management team have always strived to set new quality standards. iWORD became the world’s first printing operation to offer offset printing in seven colors, with light or-ange, light green and light blue supple-menting the four process colors.

The company leader believes the suc-cess of the company is due in part to the three golden rules that he laid down. “First, commitments need to be taken seriously. Second, we strive to ensure that our customers are always impressed by the quality of the work we produce. Third, our technology must allow us to enhance com-munication for our clients.”

Transparency is also a key factor at iWORD. All the employees are encouraged to write daily reports, and all decisions and strategies are communicated to all the

staff. “Self-motivation of the staff is a great asset for any company,” says Kinoguchi.

Company Head Since 1973Commitment to equal opportunities means that staff performing the same job and holding the same responsibilities receive the same pay, regardless of whether they are male, female, disabled or able-bodied. “Our company seeks to contribute to the betterment of society. Our policies and de-cisions are all taken with that in mind,” says Kinoguchi.

Kinoguchi has been at the helm of the company since 1973. At the peak of the oil crisis, iWORD was also at a crossroads. The board decided to ask the 34-year-old Kino-guchi, who had been working in public ser-vice, to lead the company. At his first meet-ing with 20 staff they demanded double the pay. He replied: “If you double the turnover, you can have double the pay”. The staff did precisely that, marking the start of the busi-ness’s growth.

“Always Lead the Way”The investment in the Bolero and entry in-to PUR perfect binding have also already paid dividends, says Kinoguchi taking stock. “We need to lead the way and offer new solutions to the market, but they must be of the same high quality that our com-pany is renowned for. The investment in the Bolero is a good example of how to go about it.”


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15 Percent Higher Net Output Translates into a 25 Percent Time Saving

As a highly productive web offset printing plant that offers its customers comprehensive

in-house solutions, Oberndorfer Druckerei, based near Salzburg, needs a highly automated,

high-speed perfect binder for long runs at its bookbindery. Since the line, which features

two inserting systems, an addressing unit and a foiling unit, needs to be easy to change over,

the Austrian company opted for a Muller Martini Corona C15.

E “Competition in the printing industry is fierce,” says Joachim Kühn, who as Man-aging Director at Circle Printers Central Eu-rope oversees Oberndorfer Druckerei and J. Fink Druck in the southern German town of Ostfildern. “However, there are still some market segments that are growing, such as inserts and certain catalog seg-ments.”

Catalog RevivalThat is where the web offset bookbindery, which specializes in the production of cat-

alogs, magazines, leaflets and advertising materials in the medium- to long-run seg-ments, comes into its own.

“Consumer magazines don’t have it easy nowadays, but we can compensate for the decreasing run sizes by producing a broad range of titles at our plants.” How-ever, the corporate publishing segment is booming, says Kühn. “There are many new print products, because brand manufactur-ers want to give their customers a high-grade haptic experience combined with interesting stories. In my experience, cata-

logs are also enjoying a revival. For in-stance, we’re producing increased vol-umes of fashion catalogs and catalogs for various leisure segments.”

Added Value Increases Value CreationOberndorfer Druckerei prints 66,000 tons of paper per year using four web printing presses, which, together with the 35,000 tons printed annually by J. Fink Druck, makes Circle Printers Central Europe one of the top ten printing houses in the German-speaking countries. Inserts account for 60


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percent of the print volume. The remaining 40 percent of the products are finished for the two plants in the federal state of Salz-burg.

Oberndorfer Druckerei focuses on at-tractive jobs with added value. “Added val-ue enables our customers to make their products more eye-catching, while also increasing our value creation,” explains Kühn. Some 80 percent of all the catalogs, consumer magazines and customer maga-zines produced predominantly for custom-ers in Austria, Germany and Switzerland contain inserts. They are foiled, addressed and finished for the in-house postal office by mailing route.

Inline and/or OfflineTo meet the resulting complex print finish-ing requirements, Oberndorfer Druckerei has invested in a comprehensive Muller Martini Corona C15 perfect binding line with a 12-station 3697 gathering machine,

which lends itself to higher production speeds thanks to its concave channel, as well as stream feeders, the Orbit three-knife trimmer, the CB 18 book stacker, two differently configured Sitma inserting ma-chines and the corresponding foiling and addressing systems (both inkjet and paper labels).

While Oberndorfer previously produced solely offline using two modular binders and three inserting lines, the new solution is a combination of inline and offline. One of the two Sitma lines, like the palletizer, is connected directly with the Corona C15. The second Sitma line (likewise with a con-nected palletizer) is mainly used offline when it comes to more complex produc-tion runs. However, the second Sitma line can also be connected inline with the Co-rona C15.

The underlying idea is simple, says Kühn. “As a highly productive bookbindery that offers its customers comprehensive in-

house solutions, we wanted a highly auto-mated perfect binder for web offset jobs. However, it also needed to be possible to change over the whole perfect binding line quickly. As a railway buff, I’m a fan of gates, which is why we’ve connected all the ag-gregates with belts.”

That approach has proven successful in the first months of operation, as demon-

1 Joachim Kühn (left), Managing Director at Oberndorfer Druckerei and Circle Printers Central Europe: “There are still some market segments in the printing industry that are growing.” Center: Boris Patsch (Print Finishing Director). Right: Roland Henn (Regional Director at Muller Martini Eastern Europe).

2 The 3697 gathering machine lends itself to higher production speeds thanks to its concave channel.


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1 One of the two Sitma inserting lines at Oberndorfer Druckerei is operated inline, while the other is typically operated offline.

2 Oberndorfer Druckerei specializes in inserts, catalogs, consumer magazines and customer magazines in the medium and long-run segments.

Adhesive Monitoring System Proves its Worth

Managing Director Joachim Kühn is de-lighted not only with the net output of the new Corona C15 perfect binder in Obern-dorf, but also with the quality of the end products, thanks in no small part to the Ad-hesive Monitoring System (AMS), which was installed in a Corona perfect binder for the first time at Oberndorfer Druckerei. The Adhesive Monitoring System developed by Muller Martini minimizes glue consump-

tion and production waste in perfect bind-ing. That allows cutting costs, without hav-ing to make any quality concessions.

AMS uses a laser near the gluing unit to continuously monitor glue application, even for differing glue patterns, by means of heat measurement. That enables the quantity of glue applied to be identified and adjusted during the production of softcov-er books. AMS also reliably detects any

gluing errors such as accumulations, gaps or dirt in the adhesive-free zone, allowing the machine operator to react to errors in-dividually. “Like the installed PUR nozzle system, AMS has proven its worth at our plant,” says Kühn.

strated by two figures quoted by the man-aging director. While the two modular binders bound around 32 million products yearly, the Corona C15 has bound some 21 million products across 198 jobs within just seven months. That represents a net out-put increase of almost 15 percent over the previous solution with two perfect binders.

A 25 Percent Time SavingHowever, another figure is considerably more significant to Kühn’s mind (“because,

for me, what counts is the net result at the end of the whole production process”). “Across the whole line – perfect binding, inserting, addressing, foiling, shrink wrap-ping and palletizing – we’ve reduced our time per job by 25 percent. That means we’ve achieved our goals, but we believe the system still has even greater potential.”

Oberndorfer Druckerei, which was es-tablished in 1913, has belonged to the Cir-cle Printers Group since 2008. The compa-ny, which employs some 200 people,

cannot complain of a lack of orders – on the contrary, the Corona, which operates in three shifts, has a capacity utilization of 120 percent. As a result, some jobs are now being outsourced to external bookbinder-ies in the region.

www.oberndorfer-druckerei.com

3 Stream feeders for automatic signature infeed contribute greatly to the high net production of the new Corona C15 perfect binder.



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“Our Contemporary Machine Line-Up Makes us Fit for Market Changes”

Friedrich Pustet GmbH & Co.

KG in the German city of

Regensburg came up with a

master plan to handle the

decreasing run sizes of books

published by the Pustet pub-

lishing house and other pub-

lishing companies. In addition

to investments in sheet-fed

offset and its joint forming

machine line-up, the long-

established Bavarian company

commissioned a new Muller

Martini Alegro perfect binder

in order to reduce its setup

times considerably.

E Until 1945, Friedrich Pustet produced exclusively for its in-house publishing house. The many Pustet books printed in Latin were considered to be guiding works for the Catholic church for many years and were highly regarded by the Vatican.

Today, however, the company with a long tradition going back to its establish-ment by Friedrich Pustet in Passau in 1820, which relocated to Regensburg in 1826, generates 93 percent of its turnover in the private sector. Pustet chiefly prints and binds novels, as well as school textbooks and reference books, for 70 publishing companies based in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Quick Production of ReprintsThe requirements of Pustet’s customers have changed in recent years, especially where run sizes are concerned. “Publish-ing companies continue to cut their ware-housing and logistics costs,” says compa-ny head Paul Pustet, a trained typesetter and business management graduate who joined the family business exactly 50 years ago.

That naturally has a significant impact on the number of copies per title. Runs of

first editions are 30% shorter than ten years ago on average. “Thanks to short setup times, reprints are quicker and cheaper today,” says Managing Director Ursula Pustet, a trained book trader and business economics graduate who is the sixth generation of the family to run the busi-ness.

Master Plan for New InvestmentsIn order to handle the decline in run sizes and continue to produce cost-effectively,

A Life Dedicated to Books: Managing Director Ursula Pustet, the sixth generation of the family to run the business, and company head Paul Pustet.

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the company came up with a master plan extending to all means of production. Friedrich Pustet GmbH & Co. KG invested in new sheet-fed offset printing presses, as well as in an extension of its joint forming machine line-up and a new perfect binder.

“Our contemporary machine line-up makes us fit for market changes, especial-ly given that reacting flexibly to market re-quirements has always been our strength as a family-run business that makes deci-sions efficiently,” says Plant Manager Jo-hann Seitz.

High-Frequency DryingSeitz explains that there were three

main reasons for investing in a Muller Mar-tini Alegro with a 24-station 3694 gather-ing machine, an endsheet feeder, high-fre-quency drying, a 90-meter drying section, a Solit three-knife trimmer, a Frontero front trimmer and a book stacker in the field of perfect binding.

Pustet: Printing, Publishing, Book Trade

“First, we had very positive experiences with a Muller Martin modular binder for 28 years. Second, the Alegro impressed us during our visit to the Muller Martini booth at drupa 2012. And, third, tests at Muller Martini’s bookbinding academy with our own folded signatures in the range of 36 to 120 gr/m2 and book block thicknesses of 3 to 60 mm achieved excellent results.”

Company Head as Book TesterAlthough the new Alegro is set up for PUR, Pustet binds 80 percent of its books using emulsion cold glue. “In my opinion, the cold gluing technique makes for flexible spines and optimal layflat behavior,” says Paul Pustet.

The company head himself reads one book a week (preferably about science or natural history). He regularly reads in the sauna, which has made him an expert on the durability of print products under ex-treme temperature conditions.

Although the new Alegro is set up for PUR, Pustet binds 80 percent of its books using emulsion cold glue. “In my opinion, the cold gluing technique makes for flexi-ble spines and optimal layflat behavior,” says Paul Pustet. The company head him-self reads one book a week (preferably about science or natural history). He regu-larly reads in the sauna, which has made him an expert on the durability of print products under extreme temperature con-ditions.

“Pustet Stands for Quality”The leaders of the company are enthusias-tic about the high quality of the end prod-ucts in particular. “Pustet stands for quali-ty, and the Alegro allows us to meet our exacting quality standards,” notes Ursula Pustet.

Speaking of quality, Pustet’s specialties include special forms of book finishing, such as hot foil embossing, special lac-

In the middle of the world cultural heritage city of Regensburg, which is world famous for its cathedral and boys’ choir (“Dom-spatzen”), Friedrich Pustet GmbH & Co. KG not only has a production plant equipped with five sheet-fed offset and two web off-set printing presses and various in-house print finishing equipment, but also its own

publishing company. It focuses on histori-cal and theological books. Pustet also ac-quired a reputation as a specialist in the production of lightweight volumes. In the 19th century, Pustet was the first publish-er of Karl May’s Winnetou books.

In addition to its major graphic arts plant, Pustet has its own publishing com-

pany and operates ten book stores in sev-en towns and cities in Bavaria. The compa-ny employs a total of 450 people, 200 of whom work in the printing plant and book-bindery.


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1 Plant Manager Johann Seitz (left): “As a family-run business, responding flexibly to the needs of the market has always been our strength.” Beside him are: Jens Dettloff (Bindery Manager), Peter Heilmann (Plant Technology Manager) and Frank Skorna (Sales Manager at Muller Martini Germany).

2 Pustet benefits from the high degree of size flexibility and modular designs of the Alegro.

3 The Ventura MC is the newest of the three Muller Martini book sewing machines.

4 Pustet produces hardcover books using a Muller Martini Diamant MC 60.

quering and lamination. “There’s been a marked increase in such eye-catching so-lutions,” says Seitz. “Publishing compa-nies use them increasingly to stand out in the book trade and in order to compete with electronic media too.”

Two-Thirds HardcoverSoftcover accounts for one third of the turnover from the over 10 million books produced annually in Regensburg. For hardcover books, which are produced in

double quantities, Pustet relies on three generations of Muller Martini solutions: a Diamant MC bookline (commissioned in 2009), which is coupled with a brand-new Solit three-knife trimmer, and three book sewing machines.

The latest investment in thread sewing, which the company uses predominantly for school textbooks and reference books, is the Ventura MC, which was commis-sioned in 2010. Paul Pustet still vividly re-calls the 1970s, when his company acted

as a field test customer for a new Muller Martini book sewing system. “We contrib-uted significantly to the development of the new machine,” he says proudly, as though it were yesterday.

www.pustet-druck.de


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Switching from Offline to Inline Results in 50 Percent Time Saving

Gathering, stacking on pallets, perfect binding, stacking on pallets again, followed

by three-knife trimming and stacking once more – with that time-consuming offline

process, Anjou Façonnage in Angers (France) was no longer competitive in the perfect

binding segment. Yet that suddenly changed at the beginning of the year when

the company commissioned a Muller Martini Pantera.

E The company, which was established in 1986 by Patrice and Nicole Metayer with Jacques Bretonneau (Nicole Metayer’s brother) in Angers and has since special-ized in print finishing, employs just seven people, six of whom work in the bookbind-ery, with Nicole Metayer in charge of com-mercial matters.

“As a small company, we have the ma-jor advantage of being able to react flexibly to the wishes of our customers,” she notes.

Nicole Metayer has been head of the fam-ily business with the technical support of Jacques Bretonneau since the tragic death of her husband two years ago.

Digital Ready Gains in ImportanceFlexibility is called for at Anjou Façonnage, however, not only when it comes to its personnel, but also its machine line-up, especially in softcover production. For one thing, short runs are more and more com-

mon (ranging from 1,000 to 60,000 copies), making quick setup times vital for cost-ef-fective production.

Second, an ever larger number of bro-chures are digitally printed, which means that the perfect binder also needs to be dig-ital ready. And, third, the company’s in-creasingly PUR-focused customers have ever more exacting requirements – Anjou Façonnage’s customers are primarily print-ing plants from the Angers region, some of


4

2

3

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1 Nicole Metayer: ”Since we now produce much faster, we have additional capacity for new customers.” Next to the head of Anjou Façonnage are Emanuel Brocard, Gilles Leclerc (both machine operators, Jacques Bretonneau (technical consultant) and Hervé Boucher (Sales Manager at Muller Martini France).

2 Machine operator Emanuel Brocard produces twice as quickly using the Pantera than with the earlier offline perfect binder.

3 The Muller Martini JGV saddle stitcher has been going strong at Anjou since the company was established in 1986.

4 Anjou Façonnage relies on a Muller Martini solution in thread sewing too – the Inventa.

which have been regular customers since the company was established 29 years ago.

Laborious Offline Operation Now a Thing of the PastSince Anjou Façonnage was keen to make improvements in all three respects, at the beginning of this year the company decid-ed to replace its over 20-year-old perfect binder from another manufacturer. “We operated it offline, so we had to stack the products twice on pallets between the gathering machine and perfect binder and again between the perfect binder and the three-knife trimmer,” says Nicole Metayer.

The process has been revolutionized by the newly installed Muller Martini softcov-er line. Anjou Façonnage can now produce books, catalogs and brochures (including several for the tourist region of Angers) in-line from the twelve-station 3692 gathering machine via the Pantera perfect binder to the three-knife trimmer, which was the on-ly aggregate to be adopted from the exist-ing line. “The time saving is at least 50 per-cent, and we also save on personnel costs,” emphasizes Nicole Metayer.

Ready for New CustomersThe fast setup times allow Anjou Façon-nage to bind even short runs cost-effective-ly. Not only are the make-ready times much quicker with the Pantera, Anjou Façonnage can also offer its customers PUR-bound products, for which there is ever greater demand, with a far greater range of book thicknesses and sizes.

That has expanded the bookbinder’s market opportunities, which was one of the express aims of the new investment, ex-plains the head of the company. “Since we now produce much faster, we have addi-tional capacity for new customers.”

Demo Clinches the DecisionAnjou Façonnage’s decision to invest in a Muller Martini for perfect binding was based not least on a convincing Pantera de-mo at the Muller Martini Bookbinding Academy in Switzerland. “It gave my broth-er and the head of our bookbindery, Cyril Papin, an excellent sense of the Pantera’s overall concept, its technology and Muller Martini’s project management,” emphasiz-

es Nicole Metayer. “The presentation gave us great confidence in the Pantera. For us as a small company, that’s doubly impor-tant because it’s a big investment for us.”

The Pantera is the first Muller Martini perfect binder at Anjou Façonnage, but the company has long relied on Muller Martini systems in loose leaf binding (i.e. a 321 saddle stitcher since 1995 and a JGV that has been operational since the company was established) and in thread sewing (for which it has used an Inventa since 1999).


News from Muller Martini

30

Successful Muller Martini Performance at the World Publishing Expo Newspapar Trade Fair in Hamburg

Muller Martini looks back on a successful World Publishing Expo in Hamburg. Numerous custom-ers visited the booth to discuss new and innovative business ideas with Muller Martini’s mailroom experts.

The highlights of the trade fair included drinking a toast with Oppermann Druck + Verlag GmbH & Co. KG (Rodenberg) to its extensive mailroom project. It consists of two NewsGrip F gripper conveyors, two FlexiRoll buffers and twin-unwind stations, two ProLiner inserting systems, six FlexPack bundle builders in-cluding a foiling unit, top sheet run and strapping, two belt ramp systems with six loading docks and the Connex.Mailroom control system. Oppermann is building a new plant in Rodenberg, where newspapers can be printed in the Rheinisch format in addition to the Berlin format, including various weekly publications of the Madsack Group in the future.

Numerous customers discussed new, innovative business ideas with the mailroom experts of Muller Martini at the World Publishing Expo in Hamburg.

Muller Martini also raised glasses at the booth with Brett Lawrence, Director of Production Newspapers of Guardian News & Media Limited in London. The English newspaper group has installed two Primera saddle stitchers, each with a folder feeder and a flat pile feeder, at its mailrooms in London and Manchester. To better utilize the rotations, two insert magazines for the Guardian and Observer newspapers contracted out exter-nally in the past and with a circu-lation of approximately 500,000 each are to be printed in house in the future.

CEO Bruno Müller welcomed some 80 guests from several dif-ferent countries to the traditional Muller Martini dinner held at the Historischer Speicherboden (Historical Storehouse) in Ham-burg. "It's a challenging time for all parties involved in the graphic design industry," he said in his brief after-dinner speech.

"But I'm convinced that print has a future and we'll find joint ways to success." In this process, Bruno Müller considers it to be important that the options for offset and digital printing are maintained in all segments, i.e. newspapers as well as books, catalogs or magazines. "For that

150 Guests Admire Muller Martini’s Cutting-Edge Technology at Tigris’s Open House Event

The open house event, which was jointly organized by the Tigris printing plant and Muller Martini in the Czech town of Holešov, was a huge success. The 150 guests from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary were curious to see how Tigris uses Muller Martini’s cutting-edge technology in the form of the Pantera perfect binder, the Granit three-knife trimmer, the Diamant MC35 bookline and the Ventura MC book sewing machine.

Tigris opened a completely new printing plant this summer, and exclusively relies on Muller Martini systems for print finish-ing. “Our investment has multi-plied our capacity, so we can now process jobs with large runs with even shorter lead times,” said co-owner Jirí Vanek at the open

Muller Martini’s hardcover and softcover system met with great interest among the 150 visitors to the open house event.

ICP Roto on Réunion Automates the Sorting of Insert Sets with the MailLiner

As the largest graphics arts com-pany on the island of Réunion, which lies in the Indian Ocean, ICP Roto is heavily engaged not only in the production of news-papers, magazines and books, but also in the direct mail busi-ness. Each week up 300,000 in-sert bundles, mainly containing leaflets and flyers of local shop-ping centers, are posted to mail-boxes. “Currently we still finish manually,” says Alfred Chane-Pane, Président Directeur Genéral of the family business, which was founded in 1971.

To improve its productivity, cost-effectiveness and quality as well as to cut costs, IP Roto is in-vesting in a new MailLiner direct mail system featuring eight feed-ers, an air blade for insert covers and a FlexPack M bundle builder for strapping. “That’s precisely

Alfred Chane-Pane (center), PDG of ICP Roto: “The MailLiner will improve our productivity, cost-effectiveness and quality.” Right: Philippe Van Damme (Plant Director). Left: André Chanez (Sales Manager at Muller Martini).

the machine that we need for our market,” exclaimed Alfred Chane-Pane after a convincing demo at Muller Martini’s Print Finishing Center in Zofingen.

house event. Fellow owner Pavel Manásek added: “We used to produce manually and offline, which meant that we couldn’t take on larger jobs. We therefore decided to take a leap forward and invest in fully automatic inline systems.”

reason, print finishing systems from Muller Martini are digital ready and can be used for both printing variants."


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IGAS in Tokyo: Alegro, Vareo and Primera in the Spotlight

Muller Martini’s booth was well attended on all six days of the IGAS in Tokyo. The great interest of the visitors was due not least to the fact that Muller Martini gave live demos of three ma-

The visitors to the Muller Martini booth at IGAS in Tokyo were particularly curious about the innovative technology of the Vareo perfect binder.

Post-Expo Paris: Muller Martini Presents Solutions for Mail Logistics and Direct Mail Companies

Numerous visitors to the Muller Martini booth at the Post-Expo in Paris showed interest in the MailLiner’s innovative concept, confirming the need for highly automated solutions in direct marketing. Thanks to its novel gathering concept, the MailLiner provides maximum automation for the sorting of advertising materials.

Volker Leonhardt, Director of Sales and Marketing at Muller Martini Print Finishing Systems AG, was delighted by the great interest shown. “The MailLiner is the answer to the higher mini-mum wage in both Germany and other industrialized nations. The MailLiner’s high-performance folding system provides direct mail companies with the optimal solution for the error-free, auto-matic sorting of their inserts, allowing them to recover profit margins hit by the minimum wage. And since no additional carrier is required, our new

Muller Martini’s booth was well attended every day during the company’s first- ever appearance at Post-Expo in Paris.

Vareo Perfect Binder – the Perfect Solution for Runs of One Copy at W. Thomann

The Vareo, which is designed for both digital and offset printing, has passed with flying colors at the sites of the first Muller Martini customers. Muller Martini’s new perfect binder is a major techno-logical advance in softcover pro-duction. The perfect binder is the first where each of the three clamps is equipped with its own servo motor and each clamp is individually driven. That means every processing step can be tailored to the given product.

“Using the Vareo, we can press the cover perfectly onto the spine, which greatly enhances the quality of the brochures,” says Reto Thomann, Managing Director of W. Thomann AG in Ebikon, explaining the major technological edge that the company’s new perfect binder provides. The fact that every

Reto Thomann (left) is delighted with the new Vareo perfect bind-er. Right: Production Manager Marcel Steger.

chines – the Alegro and Vareo perfect binders and the Primera saddle stitcher.

In addition to the showroom, where unique and attractive sample products were shown, the joint press conference given by Bruno Müller, CEO of Muller Martini, and Yasuyoshi, Manag-ing Director of Muller Martini Japan on “global market trends” and “our future is digital and offset” to numerous Japanese journalists specializing in the printing industry was also well attended.

The continued importance of the IGAS fair, which is held every four years, was shown by the wide range of nationalities of the visitors to the Muller Martini booth. They came not only from Japan, but also from several other countries in Asia, including China, India, Korea, the Philip-pines, Malaysia and Singapore, as well as from Australia and as far afield as Africa.

system is not only cost-neutral, but also environmentally friendly.”

processing step can now take place exactly when necessary to achieve the best possible quality of the end product is of particular importance to Reto Thomann for two reasons. First, the family-run business produces digitally print-ed products with a run size of one copy on a daily basis. Second, it specializes in high-quality niche products in large and small sizes, often featuring flaps.

Innovative solutions for digital and offset printing of short and long runs are in demand in print finishing. With Finishing 4.0, Muller Martini will underline the major importance of intelligent connectivity and an end-to-end touchless workflow, at drupa 2016.

In industrial production, Industry 4.0 – also known as the Internet of Things – stands for the flexible adaptation of products (right down to a lot size of 1) under conditions of highly auto-mated (large-scale) production, which puts it permanently on the agenda of book and magazine producers. When experts there-fore state that the economy of the future will revolve around digital networking and constant exchange of information, Bruno Müller, CEO of Muller Martini,

drupa 2016 in Düsseldorf: Muller Martini Showcases Finishing 4.0

notes: “That future got underway a long time ago in the graphic arts industry, and our solutions have long been leading the way. Müller Martini stands for Finishing 4.0 – the intelligent connectivity of our machines allows highest variabili-ty and flexibility in regards to print run lengths, format sizes and content. We are looking forward to share this view with our visitors at drupa 2016.”


Muller Martini is synonymous with Finishing 4.0 and will prove that at drupa 2016.

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Newspaper Mailroom Systems

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The New NewsGrip F Gripper Conveyor Sets Two World Records

The new Muller Martini NewsGrip F chain conveyed almost 30 billion printed pages, totaling

over 40,000 tons in weight, over the past twelve months at the Kraft-Schlötels printing plant,

which belongs to WKS Druckholding and is based in the town of Wassenberg in western

Germany. It even broke two world speed records in the process.


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E The graphic arts industry sat up and took note when Kraft-Schlötels commis-sioned the world’s largest illustration print-ing press in Wassenberg two years ago. At 70 meters long, 17 meters high and 20 meters wide,E the dimensions of the new Lithoman IV

are staggering indeed.E Paper web widths of up to 4.5 meters

(wider than the largest gravure press, which has a width of 4.32 meters).

E 160 DIN A4 pages per roll rotation (in two webs with 80 pages each).

E Upper limit of 50,000 rotations per hour (over 500,000 products per hour or 2,500 pages per second).

E Average output of 1,000 pages per second.

E Paper consumption of more than 40,000 tons per year.

200,000 Tons of Paper Per YearThose impressive figures go hand in hand with the massive dimensions of one of Ger-many’s largest web offset printers. WKS printed more than 7 billion 16-page prod-ucts in the past year, totaling more than 200,000 tons of paper. Over 40,000 tons are printed using the new printing press in Wassenberg alone, largely complex prod-ucts (for instance with registers) that can only be produced on the cutting-edge ma-

ments of our machine, then it would suc-ceed.”

The new Muller Martini chain is “put un-der immense strain” at Kraft-Schlötels, as Dr. Ralph Dittmann explains. It conveys al-most 30 billion printed pages, weighing a total of over 40,000 tons, a year. That means it covered a distance of more than 50,000 kilometers over the past twelve months – the equivalent of traveling more than once around the entire world!

It even broke two world speed records in the process. First, the machine achieved a net output of 188,000 copies per hour with a 48-page product in four-up produc-tion, producing more than nine million printed pages an hour. It then went on to produce more than 500,000 copies an hour in twelve-up production.

When High Performance is Called ForSuch high performance is crucial at WKS Druckholding given the massive volumes that it produces. The catalogs, magazines and brochures for many different custom-ers are produced in runs of up to 35 million copies. WKS prints at two plants, each em-ploying some 130 employees. Wassenberg is home to three Lithoman IV presses (two 72-page presses and one 48-page press) in addition to the new 160-page press, and three more Lithoman IV presses (48/64/80 pages) and a 32-page Lithoman III are op-erated in Essen.

Environmental protection is also a prior-ity at WKS. After earning EMAS, DIN EN ISO 50.001 and DIN EN ISO 14.001 certifi-cation, WKS became the first web offset printing plant to obtain the Blue Angel UZ 195 ecolabel.

1 The NewsGrip F chain conveys a total weight of over 40,000 tons per year at Kraft-Schlötels.

2 Dr. Ralph Dittmann (left), Managing Director of WKS Group: “Consistently reducing unit costs has to be our prime target.”Beside him (from left to right) are Dr. Christian Tübke (Management Board at RIMA Systems), Peter Schmitz (Plant Manager at Kraft-Schlötels), Holger Backes (Project Manager at WKS Group), Rolf Meyerhans (Innovation Manager at Muller Martini), Matthias Naef (Project Manager at Muller Martini).

chine. Printing these vast quantities is one thing, conveying the paper from the roll to the palletizer is another. The vast system in-volves equipment from as many as 17 dif-ferent suppliers, including Muller Martini as part of a complete package provided in conjunction with cooperation partner RI-MA systems.

The Swiss mailroom specialist supplied the NewsGrip F, whose speed of up to 100,000 copies an hour with 1:1 pick-up currently makes it the fastest single-grip-per conveyor in the market (see also box). The products leave the printing press, are front-trimmed and from there go to the NewsGrip F pick-up station, after which they are first conveyed to the head-and-foot trimmer via a belt with corner deflec-tion and then to the compensating stacker and palletizer.

Who Else But Muller Martini?“At the time of planning the new printing press, there wasn’t a chain available for the performance we required,” says Dr. Ralph Dittmann, Managing Director of WKS Group. “However, we knew that Muller Martini was working on a new solution, the NewsGrip F, which resulted in a strong de-velopment partnership. I was entirely con-fident that if Muller Martini believed that it could meet the extremely high require-

>


Newspaper Mailroom Systems

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The NewsGrip F – the Backbone of the Mailroom

Cost-effective, fast and flexible: Muller Martini's universal NewsGrip F gripper conveyor guarantees the extremely careful and reliable transport of newspapers and semi-commercials right from the printing press.

The slim aluminum profile provides for a flexible and compact conveyor guide with tight bends. The profiles are joined using flange technology and can be very easily assembled, exchanged or adjusted to changes in the chain run. The NewsGrip F can therefore be adapted to meet new re-quirements in the mailroom at any time. Thanks to its flexible construction, quiet running and minimum maintenance costs, the NewsGrip F is the ideal conveyor for newspaper printing plants of all sizes. It al-so comes into its own downstream of fast printing presses for commercial work.

With a speed of up to 100,000 copies an hour with 1:1 pick-up, the NewsGrip F is currently the fastest single-gripper convey-or in the market and is particularly efficient in production. Its quick assembly, low-cost maintenance thanks to the flexible con-struction principle of the profile and chain and the use of extremely sturdy and wear-

The universal NewsGrip F gripper conveyor guarantees extremely careful and reliable transport of newspapers and semi-commercials right from the printing press.

ment is typically subject to little mechani-cal stress.

Transport straight to the pick-up station takes place without acceleration, pressing or registration leveling of the freshly print-ed products. The wide clamp grips the product gently and transports it steadily and reliably. The chain/clamp spacing of 3 inches is ideal for all product sizes and en-ables a high transport performance at low chain speeds. The NewsGrip F satisfies all requirements for the print finishing of newspapers and semi-commercials in the standard sizes and product configuration variations.

Interfaces with upstream and down-stream components and with the Connex.Mailroom data and process management system or Mailroom Production Control (MPC) system from Muller Martini provide a clear production overview and reliable re-porting at all times.

resistant materials for the tread and guide rolls add to its cost-effectiveness. As it has only a minimum of moving parts, the equip-

“Not only are we one of the largest web offset printing companies in Germany, but also a specialist in inserts,” says Dr. Ralph Dittmann, referring with pride to the many options enabled by the new mega printing press. For instance, combinations of two paper grades are possible, and up to twelve paper webs can be processed thanks to the newly designed folder superstructure with three folder funnels.

Operating 24/7 at Full CapacityWKS Druckholding has never failed to pro-duce a job on time, no matter how exten-sive the work or at what short notice it was ordered. Despite operating non-stop every day of the week, its vast capacities are ful-

ly utilized by production for its customers, which are predominantly based in Germa-ny.

“We even have to turn down jobs,” says Dr. Ralph Dittmann, who believes printed leaflets remain the most efficient form of advertising. Despite WKS having full order books, the experienced print specialist notes that "consistently reducing unit costs must be our prime target at all times. Oth-erwise, we’d be out of the running owing to the fierce price competition,” he says. “We need to invest regularly in state-of-the-art systems to withstand that price pressure.”

In addition, lead times are increasingly short, explains Dr. Ralph Dittmann. “Runs

and deadlines are changed at shorter no-tice than in the past, which means we need to be highly flexible. Ideally, our customers would like to have 25 million copies deliv-ered on the very same day . . .”

www.wksgruppe.de


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Printing Presses

Specialized in Complete Solutions

With its investment in a new Muller Martini Concepta web printing press, Gruppo Cartotecnico

Abar Litofarma S.P.A., which specializes in packaging and is based in the Italian municipality

of San Giuliano Milanese, has strengthened its position in the market for color packing slips for

the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries.

E There is probably no other field in the graphic arts industry in which visual ele-ments have such a direct and major influ-ence on sales and in which innovation plays as big a role as in package printing. It calls for creative minds who can attract consumers’ attention at the point of sale in seconds with emotive product packaging. One of the experts in that field is Carmelo Lu Duca, who together with his wife Anto-nia Genitori established Cartotecnica Abar in 1958 and over the years has gained a reputation in Milan and far beyond as a packaging inventor.

67 (!) PatentsAn Abar subsidiary has filed no fewer than 67 packaging variations with the Italian patent office in recent years, including an exquisite cosmetics box with a mirror so that customers can also apply the pack-aged face cream evenly outside the bath-room. “As a specialist in comprehensive solutions, we’re constantly in contact with our customers, most of whom are from the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries, in order to develop and print creative pack-aging together with them,” says Carmelo Lo Duca.

Entry Into the Packing Slip Segment in 2012The innovative company, whose core seg-ment has been packaging since it was es-tablished, entered the packing slip market three years ago. Since that market seg-ment also flourished rapidly, Gruppo Car-totecnico Abar Litofarma commissioned a second web printing press just over six months ago – a five-color Muller Martini Concepta with UV, a 74 cross cutter and a Uniplus 520 stacker. The investment is giv-en particular interest because just a few days after Abar signed the purchase con-

Fulvia Lo Duca (center), Managing Director of Gruppo Cartotecnico Abar Litofarma: “The Concepta impressed us with its production

together with her husband Carmelo lo Duca. Left: Fabio Casale (Sales Manager at Muller Martini Italy).

speed, precision, high printing quality and modular design from the start.” Right: Antonia Genitori, who founded the company in 1958


Printing Presses

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tract, Muller Martini announced that it was ceasing production of printing presses (see “Panorama” 3/14 and the box on the next page).

Muller Martini GuaranteesSpare Parts and ServicesHowever, Managing Director Fulvia Lo Duca, who together with her two sisters Tiziana and Rubina bring “girl power” to the parental business, which now has 102 employees, explains that there was no question of withdrawing from the pur-chase contract for three reasons. “First, certain doubts come with the territory in

our business,” says the director with a grin. “Second, the Concepta impressed us with its production speed, precision, high print-ing quality and modular design right from the start. And, third, Muller Martini guaran-teed us that it would continue to provide us with spare parts and services even after pulling out of the new-machine business.”

Muller Martini has kept that promise throughout, says Fulvia Lo Duca. What is more, just a few weeks after commission-ing, the printing press was easily retrofitted with additional size inserts and printing in-serts thanks to the modular design of the Concepta.

Increasingly Printed in ColorThe reliable quality assurance checks also played an important role in Cartotecnica Abar’s decision to invest in the Concepta. “With pharmaceutical packing slips, it’s es-sential for legal reasons alone that every dot is correctly printed.”

The Concepta, moreover, has signifi-cantly increased the flexibility of the family-run business. While the machine of anoth-er supplier that was commissioned in 2012 only allows for black-and-white printing, even lacquered papers with a relatively high grammage can now be printed in color in house on the Concepta thanks to UV, rath-

Just a few weeks after commissioning, the Concepta at Abar was retrofitted with additional size inserts and printing inserts.


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Muller Martini has ceased production of web printing presses, but thanks to its global presence, Muller Martini custom-ers continue to benefit from its wide ser-vice range, from extension equipment and machine relocations through to spare parts.

“Services for the over 2,000 printing press-es installed worldwide have always been very important to us,” stresses Marcus Stich, Technology Manager at Muller Mar-tini Printing Presses GmbH in the German town of Maulburg. “However, now that we’re solely a service organization and no longer focus on new machines, we’ve be-come even stronger thanks to our 30 ex-perts in this field.”

With its comprehensive MMServices.Print service range, Muller Martini provides its printing press customers with an ex-tremely wide range of services.E Extension equipment: original printing inserts, register control systems, video sys-tems and remote color controls.

MMServices.Print for Printing Presses – Invest in the OriginalE Follow-up deliveries: Muller Martini still delivers complete printing units for the Concepta, VSOP and in some cases Al-printa models.E Retrofits: upgrades and updates, espe-cially for control systems.E Machine relocations: between printing plants A and B or between hall 1 and hall 2.E New configurations: in response to changing market requirements, additional printing units can, for instance, be integrat-ed or two short printing presses can be joined into one long printing press.E Inspections: Comprehensive analysis and extensive function checks. To maintain the value of the printing press.E Support: efficient online management with direct access to the machine in order to fix malfunctions quickly.E Maintenance contracts: effective life cycle management to ensure the high reli-ability and uptime of the printing press.

Retrofits, in particular, are of great im-portance, says Marcus Stich. “While free-lancers, who might at first glance be suit-able for smaller, routine tasks that are less technically demanding, carry out emergen-cy repairs in response to malfunctions, Muller Martini pro-actively offers complete solutions thanks to its extensive expertise, since we have access to the full develop-ment documents of all our machines.”

That’s especially important given that our customers have increasingly high expecta-tions in terms of uptime of the machines, and reliability is also a factor that shouldn’t be disregarded.

Companies that have their printing press serviced regularly by specialists save on time and have less production waste. “It’s like with a car,” says Marcus Stich. “As a driver you don’t notice that the shock ab-sorbers are getting worse. A poorly main-tained printing press continues to print, but it takes longer to change over, requires more substrate until it reaches a high out-put, and the quality of the end products de-teriorates. That’s why optimal mainte-nance of the machine is crucial for high productivity and uptime, and also results in less production waste.”

Having the printing press inspected reg-ularly by the supplier’s experienced techni-cians has gained in importance for two rea-sons. First, many printing plants are reducing their maintenance staff for cost reasons. Second, many firms have a single printing press, which means they lack a backup.

It is also worth relying on the original, i.e. Muller Martini, when it comes to spare parts. “We guarantee not only optimal pro-duction quality, but also high availability and fast delivery,” emphasizes Marcus Stich.

er than having to outsource such jobs. “That’s particularly important because even pharmaceutical packing slips are increas-ingly printed in color owing to company lo-gos and color printing is of particular signif-icance to the cosmetics industry.”

Abar benefits from the fact that the Con-cepta enables particularly high productivi-ty thanks to its continuous printing without production waste. “The new printing press has fully met out expectations,” says Ful-via Lo Duca.

Carmelo Lo Duca has no doubt that his company, which has its own think tank fea-turing two R&D employees for new devel-

opments, has strengthened its position on the market thanks to the Concepta. While it chiefly supplies customers in Italy and a number of other countries in Europe, as well as Asia, North America and South America, Eastern Europe will be the target of its next sales drive.

“The pharmaceutical and cosmetic mar-kets are fiercely competitive,” says the suc-cessful company owner. “However, since we’re making targeted investments to meet customer expectations – think inno-vative products, attractive prices, high quality and absolute deadline reliability – I’m confident about the future.” www.abarlitofarma.eu


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MMServices

“Productivity Up 15% –That Meets Our Targets”

By having its 14-year-old Coro-

naCompact CC12 extensively

reconditioned, Jouve, which is

in the French Département of

Mayenne, has restored the

productivity of the perfect

binding line almost to its level

at the time of commissioning.

“That matches our calcula-

tions in terms of the return of

investment,” says Director

Matthieu Jolibois with visible

satisfaction.

E The CoronaCompact CC12 perfect bind-er has been running reliably at Jouve since 2001, and in its 14 years of operation, dur-ing which it has regularly been used 24/7, it has produced over 150 million softcover products. “Over the years, minor recondi-tioning was performed from time to time,” says Director Matthieu Jolibois, who is in charge of the printing plant and servicing. “Nevertheless, the performance of the line continually declined. We had more and more machine stops and increasing prob-lems with setting up the machine, which cost us a lot of time. And the quality of the end products also failed to meet our high expectations or those of our customers.”

Reconditioned in Four WeeksIt was therefore clear that the CoronaCom-pact needed to be extensively recondi-tioned. “We’d seen at other firms the positive impact that the inspection and re-conditioning of a machine can have,” says

Matthieu Jolibois. “That’s why we decided on this urgently needed step.”

Over four weeks in February and March, six Muller Martini service technicians in-spected the complete perfect binding line in close cooperation with the Jouve tech-nicians. “We were really impressed that it could be performed within just a month,” emphasizes Matthieu Jolibois. All compo-nents were checked, from the 3691 gath-ering machine, the perfect binder and the splitting saw through to the two Zenit S three-knife trimmers, the two CB 16 book stackers and the bundle film wrapper.

In order to lose as little production time as possible, the reconditioning was per-formed twelve hours a day, from Monday to Friday. On the weekend, however, when Jouve produces irregularly, the Corona-Compact and Jouve’s second perfect bind-er ran at full speed. “As a result, our loss of production was minimal,” emphasizes Matthieu Jolibois.

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Valuable TrainingJouve’s machine operators were intensive-ly trained in parallel with the recondition-ing. The Muller Martini instructors gave the Jouve operators plenty of tips for produc-ing even more efficiently with the perfect binding line.

“The training was highly valuable, since at Jouve we believe successful production revolves around people,” emphasizes Matthieu Jolibois. “Our machine operators quickly regained the confidence in the sys-tem that they had lost before the recondi-tioning.”

The results were soon evident. There are hardly any machine stops any more, the fault rate has decreased dramatically and both the quality and the net output of the CoronaCompact have risen, with the latter up by just over 15 percent compared with the period before reconditioning. “That meets our targets. In fact, it’s even slightly above our original calculations, which has


2

3

39

The CoronaCompact CC12 – the Cornerstone of Commercial Success

1 Jouve Director Matthieu Jolibois (left): “The increase in our productivity has a lot to do with the good training of our personnel.” Beside him are Stéphane Ducourant (also Jouve Director), Hervé Boucher (Sales Manager at Muller Martini France) and the Jouve operating team.

thieu Jolibois, who notes that the complete overhaul of the CoronaCompact line has paid off financially. “The reconditioning costs were around an eighth of what we would have had to pay for a new machine. That’s a worthwhile investment if you con-sider that we now have virtually the same level of productivity as when the line was commissioned 14 years ago.”

To keep productivity at a high level, Jouve and Muller Martini have drawn up a maintenance plan for the CoronaCompact. An important element of that is the regular exchange of experiences between the ma-chine operators and Muller Martini. “That allows us to maintain the high product quality,” says Matthieu Jolibois.

On the back of its positive experiences, Jouve decided to have two other Muller Martini systems – its two Bravo saddle stitchers – thoroughly overhauled a few months after reconditioning the Corona-Compact.

www.jouve.fr

2 The two Zenit S three-knife trimmers and the CB 16 book stacker were also overhauled.

3 The whole CoronaCompact line was reconditioned within just four weeks.

At its plant in Mayenne, which was es-tablished in 1903, Jouve prints a wide range of products using two web press-es, five sheet-fed offset presses and sev-en digital systems, mainly for customers in France. The CoronaCompact CC12, which has been in operation since 2001, is primarily used for binding books, but is also for producing technical docu-mentation, with runs ranging from a few hundred to as many as 100,000 copies.

Since Jouve produces a lot of short runs in a wide range of sizes, it is espe-cially important that “the reconditioning of the perfect binding line has signifi-

cantly reduced our setup times,” ex-plains the director. “It means that we can process even shorter runs efficient-ly at the CoronaCompact and continue to offer attractive prices in our fiercely competitive market.”

With products like Jouve Digital Pub-lishing and Jouve Smart Publishing, the Jouve Group, which employs a total of 2,500 people at several sites in France, is also strong in cross-media solutions. “Our aim is to optimize the production of printed and electronic media for our customers,” says Matthieu Jolibois.

a lot to do with the good training of our per-sonnel,” says the director.

A Worthwhile InvestmentIt is no wonder that Jouve would make the same decision again. “We were convinced from the start that reconditioning would re-sult in valuable improvements,” says Mat-


1

MMServices

40

When a Perfect Binder is Joined by the Three-Knife Trimmer of a Saddle Stitcher

Multi Packaging Solutions in the Belgian municipality of Bornem now produces its roughly

600 million (mini) booklets annually using a secondhand perfect binder and saddle

stitcher from Muller Martini. The unique feature of the customer-specific softcover line

is that it is linked with a three-knife trimmer that is normally used in saddle stitching.

E “Our company philosophy is to invest in secondhand systems if we find attractive machines on the market,” says Els La-meire, Operations Director. Muller Martini had an attractive solution tailored to the specific needs of Multi Packaging Solu-tions up its sleeve for the production of per-fect bound booklets in ultra-small sizes, right down to 3.5 x 3.5 centimeters, with a flat spine.

Greater Reliability thanks to Asir 3First, the Multi Packaging Solutions plant in Bornem, which specializes in booklets, replaced the perfect binding line of anoth-er manufacturer from 1993 with an Acoro A7 manufactured in 2009.

“As a result, we’ve decreased our setup times considerably and also increased pro-duction reliability thanks to the Asir 3 sig-nature scanning system,” says Finishing & Logistics Manager Lucien Verbruggen.

1 At its plant in Bornem, Multi Packaging Solutions specializes in booklets in ultra-small format, right down to 3.5 x 3.5 centimeters.

2 The automatic Bograma friction feeder (right) acts as a buffer to compensate for the different production speeds of the Acoro perfect binder and the 0361 three-knife trimmer (left).

3 Multi Packaging Solutions can also produce stitched booklets in two-up production using the PrimaPlus saddle stitcher, and has consider-ably greater production reliability thanks to Asir 3.

4 The Bograma servo punch machine, which is operated offline, is used to finish perfect bound booklets that are not produced inline as well as ultra-small saddle stitched products.

5 Els Lameire (right), Operations Director of Multi Packaging Solutions in Bornem: “With the Acoro, we’ve tripled our productivity for perfect bound booklets.” Beside Lameire are Lucien Verbruggen (Finishing & Logistics Manager) and Xavier Haegeman (Product Manager at Muller Martini Nordic).

Two-Up and Three-Up ProductionSecond, Muller Martini recommended net-working the Acoro not with a conventional perfect binder trimmer, but with the 0361 three-knife trimmer, which is usually used for saddle stitching, since it not only lends itself to ultra-thin booklets, which at Multi Packaging Solutions never exceed a spine thickness of 5 millimeters, but also trims in

two-up and three-up production. “That has tripled our productivity for perfect bound booklets,” says Lameire, who is highly sat-isfied with the innovative inline solution.

In order to transfer the products opti-mally from the perfect binder to the three-knife trimmer, an automatic Bograma FR 550 friction feeder, which is synchronized with the three-knife trimmer, is positioned


5

2 3 4

41

600 Million (Mini) Booklets Yearly

Multi Packaging Solution’s Belgian printing plant, which was established in 1982, is one of the numerous plants of the global company, which has its head-quarters in New York and sites in North America, Asia and Europe. It employs 150 people in Bornem, who produce some 600 million (mini) booklets and leaflets yearly using offset printing, pri-marily for the pharmaceutical and health industry. The average job size is be-tween 40,000 and 45,000 copies, with a slight decline having been recorded over the years.

between the two aggregates to feed the leaflets. It also serves as a buffer to com-pensate for the difference in production speeds between the Acoro and the three-knife trimmer.

Stitched Booklets TooIn addition to the FR 550 friction feeder, which is operated inline, Multi Packaging Solutions also installed a Bograma BSM 450 servo punch machine, which is used offline, with integrated front trimming. Front, head and foot trimming, and blank separation are performed in a single oper-ation.

The BSM 450 is used not only for perfect bound booklets, which are not produced inline, but also to finish ultra-small saddle stitched products. In saddle stitching too, Multi Packaging Solutions commissioned a secondhand Muller Martini PrimaPlus manufactured in 2008 to replace a 1509 saddle stitcher from 1986. That means the company can now also produce stitched booklets in two-up production. “Our pro-duction is twice as quick as before,” says Verbruggen. “What’s more, we can now al-so process thicker products and also have far greater production reliability in saddle stitching thanks to Asir 3.”

Training IncludedMuller Martini not only took care of the re-location of the two secondhand machines of two Belgium firms to Bornem, but also inspected and reconditioned them thor-oughly. The cover feeder of the PrimaPlus, for instance, was exchanged and the Acoro

was extended to include the PUR option. The machine operators also benefited from intensive on-site training at both systems.

“It’s extremely important to have opti-mally trained machine operators,” says Verbruggen. “Given the many critical prod-ucts, such as pharmaceutical inserts, that we produce, we have to prove to custom-ers that our machine operators are well trained.”

www.multipkg.com


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Digital Solutions

42

Bottleneck Over

Preprensa Digital in Mexico City commissioned a new Muller Martini Pantera perfect binder this

May. That enables the company, which specializes in the production of magazines in short runs,

to respond far better to the needs of the market, in terms of both quality and cost-effectiveness.

E There is an incredible number of special-interest magazines in the Mexican market, which are sold at newsstands and in super-markets. The titles sell thanks to their clear thematic focus, high-quality editorial con-tent and sophisticated make-up. The pub-lishing companies use unusual sizes and lavish finishing to catch the eye of consum-ers at the point of sale. Lacquering alone is far from sufficient these days.

Ten Years of Continuous GrowthSome 90 titles are printed at Preprensa Dig-ital, which is based in Mexico City and spe-cializes in the magazine segment. Besides exacting quality requirements, the main challenges for the company are extremely short lead times and print runs ranging from 500 to 500,000 copies. The majority of the jobs have a run size of 1,000 to 5,000 cop-ies. Finishing Manager Ricardo Silva Rocha emphasizes, however, that the company specifically seeks out those challenges in or-der to stand out from the competition.

Ten years of continuous growth is a clear indication that the strategy is working. To-day, the company employs around 140 people at two sites. Magazines account for 80 percent of production, while books and other commercial work make up the rest.

Trend Toward Perfect BindingAs its name suggests, Preprensa Digital started out in 1998 as a pure-play pre-press service provider. Over time, however, the company became a one-stop print service provider that today offers everything from pre-press to sophisticated logistics. It now operates four sheet-fed offset presses in two or, if necessary, three shifts.

As the number of titles grew and vol-umes increased, a bottleneck developed at the perfect binding stage. The signatures were gathered manually, making tight deadlines tricky. Moreover, there is a clear trend today toward perfect binding, which already accounts for 50 percent of the to-tal job volume at Preprensa Digital. Those factors resulted in a pressing need to invest in a perfect binder.

Size Range and Setup TimesSince Preprensa Digital has been in regular contact with Muller Martini since installing a Valore six years and is highly satisfied with the uptime of the saddle stitcher and Muller Martini’s services, it was natural for the printing plant to evaluate the Swiss fin-ishing specialist’s perfect binder range in detail. When analyzing the solutions on of-fer, the company focused on size range and

setup times. “We were convinced by the Muller Martini solution thanks to its spine length of 380 mm, width of 320 mm and thickness of 50 mm,” says Ricardo Silva Rocha. “The twelve feeders give us the necessary flexibility, and the Pantera cov-ers 90 percent of our total job range. In ad-dition, we can handle far greater volumes and, above all, process the whole range of runs much more efficiently.”

Amrys Comes Into Its OwnThe company also benefits from the ex-tremely short setup times of between 20 and 30 minutes for a complete job change-over, depending on the number of signa-tures. The Pantera is equipped with the Au-tomatic Make Ready System (Amrys), which speeds up the setup process. Amrys is ideally suited to the magazines produced by Preprensa Digital. The system saves all job-specific data, which can be retrieved at the touch of a button if required.

Only the size is set at the feeders, en-abling signatures consisting of 2 to 32 pag-es and made from a wide range of paper grades to be readily processed. “That en-ables us, for instance, to squeeze in the production of a preliminary run at short no-tice and then complete the previous job,”


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43

1 Some 90 magazines are printed at Preprensa Digital in Mexico City and are now perfect bound using the Pantera.

2 Ricardo Silva Rocha (center), Finishing Manager at Preprensa Digital: “The Pantera enables us to handle far greater volumes”. From left to right: Pedro Huerta Garcias (Sales Manager at Muller Martini Mexico), Antonio Reus Rocha (Head of Sales at Muller Martin Mexico).

notes Ricardo Silva Rocha. He also rates highly the ability to load the feeders from both sides, since it makes the production process more flexible.

High Net OutputThe performance of a system is naturally a key question when it comes to any invest-ment. The Pantera has stabilized at an av-erage speed of 3,600 cycles per hour at Preprensa Digital, which comes close to the maximum performance of 4,000 cy-cles. In the initial phase, the company was supported by Muller Martini’s service team in order to keep the learning curve as flat as possible. The short response times are a strong argument in favor of Muller Martini, says Ricardo Silva Rocha.

The Finishing Manager is convinced that the company will be able to increase pro-ductivity further as it gains experience in operating the new machine. “However, we’re more than satisfied with the results so far – the counter of the Pantera stood at 800,000 copies after just three months.”

The new perfect binder, which has in-creased quality significantly and enabled

shorter processing times, has won the company two lucrative contracts for the production of 80,000 perfect bound copies each month. Following the successful start, Preprensa Digital plans to upgrade the Pantera for PUR binding in the coming months, and also integrate a three-knife trimmer into the system.

www.preprensadigital.com


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Saddle Stitching Systems

44

Primera – Ideal for Long and Short Runs

FGP Studio in the Czech city

of Olomouc increasingly prints

smaller digital jobs alongside

occasional long runs. The

successful family-run business

therefore decided to invest

in the Muller Martini Primera

saddle stitcher, which boasts

quick job changeover times.

E At up to 14,000 cycles per hour, FGP Studio’s new saddle stitcher is consider-ably faster than its predecessor model. However, that was not the main reason why Miloslav Kyjevský, who founded the company in 1990, decided to commission a Primera this May. “It goes without saying that the high productivity of the new sad-dle stitcher is a big benefit for us, such as when it comes to the product catalog that we produce in a run of 650,000 copies once every other month. However, the short job changeover times of the Primera played a much bigger part in our investment deci-sion.”

300 Digital CopiesFGP Studio not only prints large jobs, but also many jobs with medium-sized and small runs of around 1,000 copies. Or as Miloslav Kyjevský puts it: “No job is too small for us”.

The company increasingly prints prod-ucts digitally in runs of 300 copies, since, in addition to five sheet-fed offset presses with a total of 20 printing units, FGP Studio operates two state-of-the-art digital print-ing systems. “The signatures go from the digital printing presses via the joint form-ing machine to the Primera,” says Lukáš Kyjevský, who is in charge of digital and pre-press and manages the company to-

gether with his father and sister Katerina, explaining the process of finishing digital print products.

Tested in Person by the Company Head Before making his final decision to invest in the Primera, Miloslav Kyjevský wanted to put the saddle stitcher through its paces in person. He therefore came to Muller Martini’s head office in the Swiss city of Zofingen with his products to see the short job changeover times for himself at the Print Finishing Center there.

“We deliberately took signatures with a very low grammage with us as well so we could really put the saddle stitcher to the test,” recalls the company owner with a mischievous grin. “However, I have to say, the Primera ran excellently with all the products.”

An End to Production WasteMiloslav Kyjevský’s experiences at the Demo Center were backed up by the first months of operation in Olomouc. “We change the saddle stitcher over several times a day, and the process is really quick.”

Besides the quick changeover times, Miloslav Kyjevský also emphasizes two other benefits of his latest investment, for which he received funding from the Euro-

pean Union. “We’ve been able to increase the quality of the end products consider-ably and we virtually have no production waste any more. That’s especially impor-tant, as we have to contend with fierce price competition and deadline pressure.”

Soon after commissioning, it became clear that FGP Studio could significantly improve its market position thanks to the new saddle stitcher featuring six flat pile feeders, a folder feeder and the Perfetto compensating stacker. After just three days, the machine operator, who had just learned the ropes of the new system, was faced with a large job, which he performed excellently at an average production speed of 11,000 cycles per hour.


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1 Just three days after being commissioned, FGP Studio’s new Primera saddle stitcher passed its first big test with flying colors.

2 Miloslav Kyjevský, Katerina Kyjevská and Lukáš Kyjevský (from left to right) are confident about the future of their company. Right: Lubos Kunze (Managing Director of Muller Martini Czech Republic).

Please scan the QR code above to see the wide-ranging options of the Primera sad-dle stitcher via Muller Martini’s YouTube channel.

Primera Saddle Stitcher – Tailored to Your Individual Needs

The individual challenges faced by each customer in terms of market require-ments, job structure, size range and number of copies call for a saddle stitch-er that can easily be adjusted to custom-er-specific needs.

Muller Martini therefore offers the Primera with a wide range of configura-tion options:E Feeders with manual feeding, stream

feeder loading or roll loadingE Tilt-back or fixed feedersE Two different three-knife trimmers as

per requirementsE A range of quality checks (thickness

measurement, Asir 3 automatic sig-nature image recognition, double sheet control)

E Merchandise tipperE Folder feederE Center cut/trio cut for two-up and

three-up productionE Die-cuttingE Flexible processing options such as

inserting, film wrapping, addressing and palletizing

Jobs from Other Printing PlantsJust a few weeks later Miloslav Kyjevský was awarded a saddle stitching job by a large printing plant in the vicinity. “That was only possible because the new Prim-era has made us much more flexible,” says the company founder.

In addition to catalogs and brochures, FGP Studio, which employs 50 people and operates five days a week around the clock, prints a number of periodicals for custom-ers in the region, such as sport magazines for clubs in the local area. Miloslav Kyjevský points out another advantage of the new Primera when it comes to such repeat jobs: “Unlike earlier, we save those jobs and quickly upload them again, which saves us a lot of time.”

Optimistic About the FutureWhat is more, the family-run business, which produces full-color promotional ma-terials (including on plastic) using a 1.6-me-ter special plotter, can use the Primera for another specialty. Contour-punched prod-ucts are folded using the cover feeder at a production speed of 10,000 copies per hour.

It is no wonder that Miloslav Kyjevský and his company, which also prints signa-tures for softcover and hardcover books, which it has produced by partner firms, are confident about the future: “We aim to continue to pursue our combination of off-set/digital printing and to become the mar-ket leader in our region.”

www.fgp.cz


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Saddle Stitching Systems

46

“Hotels Are Increasingly Relying on Print”

Since Lanarepro GmbH, which

is based in Lana (South Tyrol/

Italy), chiefly produces small

and medium sizes, the

company decided to replace

its 18-year-old Presto saddle

stitcher with a new Presto II,

enabling it to boost its

productivity thanks to two-up

production and short setup

times.

E Making Headway in Tourism with Print was the title of our Forum article in the last issue of “Panorama” on the continuing im-portance of print to the tourism industry. One man who can confirm that tourism companies are again integrating print prod-ucts into their communications strategy is Eduard Niedrist. “Hotels are increasingly relying on print,” says the CEO of Lanare-pro, who established the company in 1980 together with his three colleagues Dieter Reisinger, Reinhold Köllemann and Martin Geiser.

Complete Concepts Pay OffFor the four partners, the tourism indus-try’s belief in print is of great importance, since South Tyrol is a classic holiday desti-nation and Lanarepro produces large num-bers of brochures and magazines for cus-tomers in the tourism industry. Lanarepro often acts as a general contractor in such cases, since it has a traditionally strong cre-ative department with specialized person-nel, and creates complete concepts (in-

cluding for externally produced hardcover and softcover books) – extending from the product idea to printing and print finishing – for its customers in the fields of publish-ing, tourism and commerce.

That, incidentally, is an important reve-nue source for the company. “It enables us to keep the entire value chain in house,” notes Eduard Niedrist, who oversees sales and operative management.

From Pre-Press Business to Full-Service ProviderTrue to its name, Lanarepro was a pure-play pre-press business for 15 years, before in-stalling a printing press in 1995. In 1997, the addition of a Presto definitively made Lanarepro a full-service provider. The Muller Martini saddle stitcher operated re-liably in Lana for 18 years. However, since it was starting to age and the company chiefly produces small and medium sizes, Lanarepro replaced it this summer, on the company's 35th anniversary, with a Presto II featuring a cover feeder, three twin feed-


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47

1 Eduard Niedrist (second from left), CEO Lanarepro: “Complete concepts for our customers enable us to keep the entire value chain in house.” Left: Project Manager Michael Niedrist. Right: Fabio Casale and Giovanni Bertuzzo (both from Muller Martini Italy).

2 The compact Presto II comes into its own at Lanarepro thanks to its fast make-ready, which is ideal for small sizes.

ers, an Asir 3 signature scanning system and special equipment for small sizes.

“Not only can we stitch in two-up pro-duction, which is a great advantage for small sizes, but the setup process is also faster in comparison to the predecessor model,” says Project Manager Michael Niedrist, son of the company founder.

From 500 to 150,000 CopiesFor Lanarepro, which employs 22 people, that is of particular importance because its run sizes of saddle stitched products with a page count ranging from eight to over 100 can be as low as 500 copies. The com-pact Presto II, which offers the best price-performance ratio in the market in Eduard Niedrist’s opinion, comes into its own

thanks to its fast make-ready and also saves on space.

At the other end of the run scale, the high performance of the Presto II stands Lanarepro in good stead, since the compa-ny also produces runs of up to 150,000 copies for its customers in South Tyrol and Italy (which account for 45 percent of its turnover) and its growing numbers of customers in Germany and Austria (55 percent).

www.lanarepro.com


48

“Print Sets Us Apart from the Digital Noise”

“With an annual job volume of some EUR 25 million, Deutsche Bahn AG is a major customer of

printing plants and print finishing businesses. “If you hand the customer a product, you show

them how important they are to you,” says Carola Lammich, who is in charge of placing print

orders at Deutsche Bahn (DB).

E The variety of print products at Deut-sche Bahn is just as impressive as the print volume. They range from train tickets, lar-ge-size schedules at train station, wiro-bound schedules for train drivers through to promotional materials, forms, direct mail for rail card customers and business cards to training documents, personalized givea-way notepads and the “db mobil” custo-mer magazine.

“Panorama” spoke with Carola Lam-mich Dipl.-Ing. (FH), M.BC, Strategic Pro-curement Manager for Infrastructure Faci-lity Management and Print Services about the importance of print media at the com-pany and criteria for print and print finis-hing jobs.

«Panorama»: Deutsche Bahn places print orders worth EUR 25 million each year. What kinds of print products ma-ke up the lion’s share of your job volu-me?Carola Lammich (Deutsche Bahn AG): Train tickets purchased at the counter or ti-cket machines account for 24 percent – there’s been a downward trend for years as a result of digital tickets and our efforts to cut back on printing. Schedules, in particu-lar in our Intercity-Express (ICE) and Inter-city (IC) trains, make up 20 percent. Promo-

tional materials (catalogs, flyers, business reports, posters) account for 18 percent. Forms and other printed materials make up 5 percent of the total. The remaining third consists of graphic papers and print finis-hing services at our own printing plants.

As a procurement manager, what is your strategy for selecting printing plants and how do you manage your suppliers? We base our decision on three core crite-ria.E Profitability: Our suppliers need to be cost-effective companies with competitive prices, meet deadlines reliably and provide high quality.E Social aspects: The bids of our sup-pliers have to be acceptable. In other words, we don’t accept dumping prices and the graphic arts companies must com-ply with the minimum wage regulations and social standards.

E Environmental friendliness: We requi-re our suppliers to have environmental cer-tification (FSC, Blue Angel, non-use of PFCs), and we promote conservation of re-sources, recycling and a reduction in CO2

emissions.To ensure all those requirements are

met, we have our own supplier manage-ment system. That applies, by the way, to all purchases made by Deutsche Bahn – to infrastructure, as well as vehicles and spa-re parts.

A third of Deutsche Bahn’s staff is em-ployed outside Germany. Are your print jobs spread abroad to a similar extent?We chiefly buy print products and services from suppliers in Germany. Potentially lo-wer prices abroad tend to be outweighed by the higher freight costs. And there are also transport risks in the case of security printing.

Do you have an established group of re-gular printing partners, or do you prefer to work with as many different suppliers as possible?We have around 160 listed suppliers. Just over half of those are our regular partners. We have around 90 master agreements with them, most of which are for a period

“We don’t accept dumping prices.”

Interview Carola Lammich (Deutsche Bahn AG)


49

Carola Lammich: “Print has a great advantage: haptics.”

of two to three years. That lowers our inter-nal process costs, and also has the major benefit of our master agreement partners being well acquainted with our quality re-quirements. Having close ties with sup-pliers obviously makes cooperation easier,

as we don’t have to reinvent the wheel for every job.

How often do you announce tenders for new print jobs?If a master agreement expires, we’re obli-gated to announce a new tender under EU directives. Before the expiry of each mas-ter agreement, we always look closely at whether we need to adapt it from a strate-gic point of view, since we want to get the best possible solution for our money.

Deutsche Bahn has its own sheet-fed offset printing plant in Rheinstetten ne-

ar Karlsruhe with 60 employees. What products do you chiefly print in house?At our in-house 3B-format printing plant, we produce a lot of promotional materials, schedules for internal use (e.g. for track oc-cupancy), the large-size white and yellow departure and arrival schedules that are put up at our 5700 stations, and wiro-bound schedules for our train drivers so that they can easily turn the pages during the jour-ney.

In addition to your sheet-fed offset prin-ting plant, you have smaller digital prin-ting plants with two to eight employees

“Many of our printing innovations, such as in ticket security, aren’t actually visible to our customers.”


50

at 14 other sites across Germany. What proportion of the print products you pro-duce in house are printed digitally, and what products do you mainly use digital for?Sixty-five percent of the products we pro-duce in house are printed digitally. At our digital printing plants, which resemble co-py shops in some respects, we produce di-rect mail for rail card customers, business cards, promotional materials in short runs, handouts, training documents and perso-nalized and non-personalized notepads.

And what about the digital to offset ra-tio for outsourced print jobs?There it’s the reverse. A significantly higher proportion of our outsourced products are offset products, because we have them produced using both web and sheet-fed presses, which generates a large print and print finishing volume.

Print finishing accounts for 18 percent of your total purchasing volume in the graphic arts field. What kind of products do you have print finished?

In addition to the wiro-bound schedules for our train drivers that I mentioned earlier, the products are typically perfect-bound brochures, high-quality promotional mate-rials and in some cases direct mail whose production is outsourced instead of being produced at our digital printing plants.

Are there also stand-out innovations among your many print products?Innovativeness is naturally a major topic at a group of companies like ours. The ques-tion, however, is how you measure innova-tion. It shouldn’t be forgotten that many of our printing innovations, such as in ticket security, aren’t actually visible to our cus-tomers. However, we’re keen to see attrac-tive proposals from our suppliers in the pro-motional segment. To tell the truth, we still have some way to go when it comes to in-novations in the print segment, but I’m working on it. However, I suspect that our promotional activities – I’m thinking here, for instance, of speedy booking – will shift more and more toward digital media, whi-le we’ll increasingly use print products for image advertising.

What role do print products play in com-parison to electronic media in Deutsche Bahn’s communications mix?Print is still highly important, especially when it comes to our image advertising.

Schedule information and price informati-on, however, are increasingly going digital.

In what segments do you believe print products work better than electronic media for your customers?Print has a great advantage: haptics – the surface of the material. If you hand the cus-tomer a product, you show the customer how important they are to you. Print sets us apart from the digital noise. People are increasingly learning to ignore digital news. Advertising on a mobile phone is quickly opened, closed and forgotten.

Which are the strongest fields for elec-tronic media at your company group?Real-time information and faster purcha-sing decisions. Of course it’s convenient to purchase a rail ticket with a single click on your mobile phone or tablet.

What kind of information are your cus-tomers increasingly retrieving online today?Definitely schedules. Real-time informati-on is of particular importance to our custo-mers.

Do you see any differences between the various age categories in terms of the communication patterns of your custo-mers?That’s a good question. We don’t have any studies on that but, interestingly, I often ob-serve in person that a lot of rail customers have their mobile phone at hand, especial-

“Print is still highly important, especially when it comes to our image advertising.”

Interview Carola Lammich (Deutsche Bahn AG)


Print finishing 18 % Promotional materials 18 %

Schedules 20 %

Forms/business stationery 5 %

Tickets 24 %

Graphic papers 15 %

Breakdown of Print Products and Services Purchased by Deutsche Bahn

51

“The route schedules in long-distance trains are used very frequently.”

Deutsche Bahn in figures*

E Annual turnover of EUR 39.7 billionE 306,000 employees worldwide

(196,000 in Germany – 10,000 trainees – 500 different professions).

E 33,400 kilometer route network (three times as long as the German freeways).

E 5,700 train stations. E 24,840 passenger trains per day.E 11.9 million passengers per day.E 4,742 freight trains per day. E 329 million tons of freight

transported by rail a year. E Europe’s number one in rail

infrastructure, train stations and rail freight traffic.

E Europe’s number two in bus and rail passenger transport.

E Germany’s largest bicycle rental provider.

E Germany’s largest car sharing provider.

E Germany's fifth largest energy supplier.

E 75% green electricity used in long-distance transport.

E Total annual procurement volume: EUR 19 billion.

*According to the figures for 2014

ly younger customers, but still put money in one of our machines to buy a printed ti-cket.

How will the way your company com-municates with customers change in the next five years?It will go increasingly digital. Electronic me-dia have the big advantage that we can ma-ke our customers special offers or provide them with real-time information (for instan-ce, via screens on the trains) more quickly. And our communications will, above all, become more targeted, so personalized di-rect mail will become increasingly import-ant. Our print volume will undoubtedly

decrease further and be increasingly con-centrated on high-quality products. We’ll make even more targeted use of print pro-ducts, such as personalized notepads as gi-veaways for our customers, in the fields of rail, bicycle rental and car sharing. I don’t anticipate that we’ll remove our 7,000 ti-cket machines.

Do you still print schedule books for the whole year ahead, listing all train con-nections across Germany?No, we haven’t done so for some years now.

What were your reasons for stopping?Declining demand among our customers. As I mentioned earlier, schedule queries are now almost entirely made digitally.

The multiply folded route schedules in your long-distance trains are legendary. To what extent are they still used by rail passengers today?Very frequently, although their demise has often been predicted! Only a very few are collected unused at the destination. We know that our customers pay close atten-tion not only to the route information, but also to the advertising. That’s why we not only place the schedules on every seat, but also put whole bundles in a pocket next to the newspapers. Personally, I’d find it a shame if they ever disappeared.

To your mind, what aspect of print com-munications with your customers has the greatest innovation potential?Definitely customized print products. We need to reach out to customers directly in such a way that they instantly recognize the benefit for themselves. That’s why we need to keep on improving our processes and provide customers with information even faster and in an even more targeted way in line with the “true-to-market” prin-ciple.

And for how much longer will there still be printed tickets, schedules and a cus-tomer magazine in German trains?For a long time to come!

www.deutschebahn.com

“We’ll make even more targeted use of print.”

“We need to reach out to customers directly using customized printed materials in such a way that they instantly recognize the benefit for themselves.”


www.mullermartini.com

Phone +41 (0)62 745 45 75

Muller Martini Showcases Finishing 4.0

There is a demand for innovative print-finishing solutions for the

digital and offset printing of long and short runs.

With Finishing 4.0 Muller Martini will underline the major importance

of digital networking and end-to-end touchless workflow, from printing to

distribution, at drupa 2016. Muller Martini is leading the way in finishing

solutions with its smart automation.

Muller Martini – your strong partner.

Get off to a flying startwith Muller Martini.

drupa, May 31 to June 10, 2016Halle 2, Stand A49

We look forward to meeting you!

The future is automated. Die Zukunft ist automatisiert.

Your strong partner.

Finishing 4.0

The future is automated. Die Zukunft ist automatisiert.

Finishing 4.0

Online retailers revive print with attractively presented ...€¦ · Jouve, Mayenne –...

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