KBA North America, a leading supplier of sheetfed offset and digital presses based in Williston, VT, has announced that IntegraColor, Inc., a leading visual communications company headquartered in Mesquite, Texas, has purchased a KBA Rapida 205 81-inch five color sheetfed press, making IntegraColor the first printer in the southwest with 81” litho capabilities. The press is currently being installed with plans to begin live operating production in early 2006. “The purchase of this press will help us further expand our capabilities into the 81-inch market under one roof to include the production of extra large format litho jobs, with extremely high print quality, on a wider variety and more rigid substrates including paper, board, and plastic”, says Larry C. King, President and CEO of IntegraColor. “Our new KBA Rapida 205 will definitely compliment our current large format screen, UV sheetfed, conventional sheetfed and large format digital press lineup used to produce a wide assortment of point of sale products.” Extremely efficient; flexibility to run paper, board, and plastics The KBA Rapida 205 81-inch five-color press will provide IntegraColor with a maximum sheet size of 59.5 x 81-inches running at a speed of 9,000 sph. The press has been configured with a special board-handling package and is also to be equipped with UV facilities for printing on plastics. It also incorporates an ICS slitter system and non-stop pile changing for the feeder and delivery. The press will give the company the flexibility to run paper and board stock ranging from 50 lb to 64 pt. Plus, this is the first press of this size to offer a wide range of automated technology, such as a fully-automatic plate changer, automatic blanket and impression cylinder washing systems, inline anilox coating system and drying options such as IR, UV, or hybrid. KBA has added its own Qualitronic inline sheet inspection system, KBA’s Densitronic quality control system, and inline perforating and slitting to the press. An automatic camera register control system provides an extremely efficient system for fast color registration on a press of this size. In September 2005, KBA’s factory in Germany celebrated as the 100th Rapida printing unit of the super large-format series was put through its final print testing at the KBA plant in Radebeul, Germany. The unit was part of the five-color Rapida 205 purchased by IntegraColor. Landmark installation “We believe that the KBA Rapida 205 81-inch press will become a landmark installation for IntegraColor in its capabilities and future growth,” says Ralf Sammeck, KBA North America’s president and CEO. “It will certainly differentiate the firm from its competitors. The output on the Rapida 205, measured by printed area, is equal to running four 40-inch presses. That is a significant achievement. Plus, the variety of automated technology on the Rapida 205 will improve efficiency and speed order turnaround for IntegraColor’s customers.” Founded in 1956, IntegraColor is one of the top 70 largest printing companies in North America and the largest in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. The firm began with 4 employees and has grown to over 600 employees with over 450,000 square ft of production, warehouse and fulfillment space. One-stop resource Today IntegraColor is a leading one-stop resource for point of purchase and marketing collateral production and fulfillment for small business, rising growth companies, and Fortune 500 giants nationwide. Their under-one-roof print and print fulfillment solutions promote superior quality, greater consistency, faster turn times and exceptional cost savings for our customers. Helping their customers better manage the supply chain is what it is all about. To meet this demand, Epopglobal, IntegraColor’s online ordering and supply chain management solution, brings unprecedented control, flexibility, and savings to the print procurement and distribution process. Available exclusively to IntegraColor customers, each epop solution is totally customized with just the right package of capabilities to meet each customer’s special needs. Modules include online store profiling, digital asset management, item catalogs, POS customization, and management reports. “It is quite simply the best and easiest way to manage print procurement and distribution,” says King. Meeting the needs of small business, rising companies, and Fortune 500 giants nationwide with under-one-roof print and print fulfillment solutions backed with leading edge technology that promotes superior quality, greater consistency, faster turn times and exceptional cost savings is what IntegraColor’s vision is all about.