June 21, 2004 -- Koenig & Bauer AG (KBA) will be represented with an info stand during Publish Asia 2004 at the Suntec City Convention Centre in Singa-pore on 1st and 2nd July. Just a few weeks after drupa, which made such a positive contribution to the new optimism growing in the print industry, the specialists from the local subsidiary KBA Asia Pacific Sdn. Bhd. in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, together with colleagues from group headquarters in Germany, will be presenting newspaper printers comprehensive information on cost-oriented technologies, innovative processes and new service packages. A reception at KBA user Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) is planned for the evening of the second day, and will offer interested guests a first-hand impression of the print quality and cost-efficiency of the KBA Commander installation which came on line here in summer 2003. The press counts a total of 224 printing couples and is used primarily to print the SPH flagship The Straits Times for a daily circulation of up to 450,000 copies. KBA newspaper presses in demand in Southeast Asia The continued dynamic growth of the Southeast Asian markets has established the region as one of the most important for KBA. Over the past years, numerous newspaper presses have been delivered to prominent publishing houses in Malaysia, South Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore and India. It is the People's Republic of China, how-ever, which is gradually confirming its lead as the central market in the Far East, also in the newspaper sector. Further Comet installations and the first Continent for China Just a few weeks ago, further contracts for three single-width newspa-per presses of the Comet and Continent series were concluded with newspaper publishers in China. Two of these installations have been configured with a heatset package for the printing of semicommercials. The media house Yunnan Daily in Kunming, the capital of the western province of Yunnan, for example, will be taking delivery of a KBA Conti-nent with hot-air dryer at the end of 2004. The four-high tower installa-tion is to produce semicommercial inserts and supplements for nine own daily newspapers and three magazines, as well as for the 27 further newspaper titles printed on a contract basis. It is to comprise four KBA Pastoline reelstands, two towers of H-type printing units and an AF 16 jaw folder. The provincial capital Hangzhou, some 200 km to the southwest of Shanghai, is the headquarters of the Hangzhou Daily Press Group. As a publisher of four daily newspapers with a regular circulation of more than three million copies, as well as of two magazines, the group has signed up for a single-width KBA Comet with provisions for semicommercial production to be delivered late-2004. The feature list of the new Comet includes three reelstands, two four-high towers, a jaw folder, and similarly a heatset package. A further KBA Comet with eight towers, ten reelstands and two jaw fold-ers has been ordered by the Hua Shang Bao Newspaper Group for its central print facility in Xian, the capital of Shaanxi Province in Central China. The group publishes newspapers and magazines in four cities, among them the Chinese Business View. The first section of the new press is already to be shipped in mid-2004, to be followed by a second towards the end of the year.