KBA North America, a leading supplier of sheetfed offset and digital presses based in Williston, VT, is announcing that National Posters, Inc., the flagship company of National Print Group, Inc., headquartered in Chattanooga, TN, is preparing for the installation and start-up of the world's largest press. The KBA Rapida 205 81-inch seven-color plus coater sheetfed press, the world's largest litho press in North America weighing in at almost 600,000 lbs., is due to be introduced with a ribbon-cutting ceremony in mid-July 2006 with a tentative start-up date of August 2006. “We are a successful printer because we are constantly responding to the needs of our customers,” says George Diamantis, Chairman of National Print Group, parent of National Posters. “This press will enable our company to present our customers with more print opportunities and options than ever before.” This includes: •Ability to print on a wider variety of substrates •Faster cycle time •More control over producing jobs in-house •Enhanced quality and cost efficeincies Most large format units in the world Diamantis adds, “There will be no single competitor that will be able to do what we can with this press or have the ability to offer the variety of printing we offer, from digital to screen to litho. This press enhances and completes our current large format capabilities!” The signage market represents 60% of National Posters current business. By installing the Rapida 205 with hybrid UV capabilities, the firm will be able to print signage on a wider variety and more rigid substrates. National Posters' roster of existing presses is capable of printing up to six colors. The new KBA Rapida 205 with seven colors will allow the firm to take advantage of the “significant growth” in multi-color printing and the trend toward using opaque whites, metallic and custom logo colors. Answering the needs of their customers “This press will give us the ability to more quickly respond to the needs of our customers,” says Casey Scott VP of Marketing. “In addition our customers will now have the ability to print both short-run and long-run jobs with variability. We can use our current digital technology to print the variable message or print prototypes of holiday store advertising. Once they are approved, we can print the entire job on the Rapida 205.” To prepare for the world's largest press, National Posters has been busily readying its Chattanooga, Tennessee plant. A new glass-enclosed pressroom has been built to house the large press with enough concrete to hold the 600,000 lb press. Surrounding the pressroom is a new customer lounge and viewing area to watch jobs being printed on press. To accommodate the larger sheet size, National Posters has upgraded its prepress department adding two new larger-format Kodak/Creo platesetters. Significant step forward “The installation of this press will be a significant step forward for our company,” says Joel Stuart, general manager of National Posters. “We've been hoping for the last 10 years that a press this size would be available and KBA has done it. The new KBA Rapida 205 will help to increase our capacity and give us faster turnaround using the UV capability to dry jobs and send them immediately to the finishing department. Key components on the press are its automatic plate loading and its integrated production workflow via the KBA Logotronics Professional management system. All of these systems will significantly reduce makeready and increase our productivity.”