KBA North America, a global press manufacturer forming a new headquarters in Dallas, Texas, announces that Imprimerie Vincent Printing, a high-end family-run commercial print shop based in Gatineau, Quebec, is the first in Canada to purchase and install a new KBA Rapida 75 23 x 29-inch four-color press with aqueous coater. In less than one week, the press was delivered, installed, and printing saleable sheets. The Rapida 75 was sold in cooperation with KBR Graphics Ltd., the central and eastern Canadian distributor for KBA North America.
 
“Our fast growth is due to our willingness to work with our designer customers, educate them on the different types of print techniques available, and have an assortment of digital and offset presses on hand to produce their jobs to their high standards,” explains Nicole Vincent, president of Imprimerie Vincent Printing. “Adding the new KBA Rapida 75 is an important step for the growth of our business. This new press provides us with the speed and automation to produce the highest quality possible along with a flexible size format for work we have on hand and new work that we will be able to accommodate in the future. It is the cornerstone for our future growth, prosperity, and expanding customer base.”
 
Plans call for the Rapida 75 to be used in conjunction with the shop’s digital presses to provide offset quality along with personalization on the digital machines for the best of both worlds.
 
Working hand-in-hand with designer high-end jobs
 
“We work hand-in-hand with our designer customers on their exact needs, special substrates, and hard-to-print work,” says Vincent. “Fifty percent of our jobs are designer-related due to our ability to be flexible and offer them a wide range of equipment to use. We can handle all of their work on our digital presses to high quality offset machines. The most common stock is 80 to 100 lb but we do use some 12 to 14 pt and can go up to 24 pt if need be.”
 
Fast turnaround is another key to the firm’s success. “We recently helped one of our customers at a local trade show who was on a tight schedule and needed a job change,” explains Vincent. “They came to us at 3:00 p.m. with the necessary changes. In one-and-a-half hours later, we had redesigned and plated the job, put it on our new Rapida 75 press, cut and folded it by 5:00 p.m. and had it ready for delivery that night.”
 
Having made its debut at Drupa 08, the six-up Rapida 75 23.75 x 29.5-inch press offers a 15,000sph, is configurable with two to eight colors plus coater and four-over-four perfector, and incorporates some 30 new features. Many of the proven features that have made the bigger format presses popular have now been incorporated in the Rapida 75. These include pneumatic suction sidelays, an open inking unit design, gripper systems and KBA Densitronic density measurement and control from the console. At Drupa 08, the five-color coater press with extended delivery demonstrated a high-speed job change from luxury spirits packaging on lightweight board to a brochure on 150gsm paper. For printers who produce US letter or typical magazine and catalogue formats, the Rapida 75 23 x 29-inch size allows six-up layouts. In other words, a printer can produce two extra copies compared to other half-format presses and 50% higher productivity.
 
This particular size format is a perfect fit for Imprimerie Vincent Printing. Posters and oversize forms are easily produced on the Rapida 75, says Vincent, with plans to add packaging and top sheet production in the future. “Thirty-three percent of our work calls for the 23 x 29-inch format,” she says. “The high quality registration and capabilities of the press give us the confidence to print multiple pass jobs. By having the aqueous coater operational, we’re able to reduce our throughput by quickly sealing and drying each job with a coating to quickly move it to the bindery as well as enhance each print job with aqueous coating.”
 
User-friendly, excellent solids, and stable inking system
 
Since its installation, the press operator has found how flexible, easy-to-operate, fast, and high quality production can be produced on the Rapida 75. “The press operator reports that the press prints excellent solids, has a very stable inking system, and has a fast running speed,” says Vincent. “They are also pleased with the ergonomic control console and the full automation on this press. It was very easy for them to train to use the press due to its user-friendliness and automation.”
 
The Canadian shop also cites the positive environmental aspects of the press. “The Rapida 75 is a ‘green’ press,” states Vincent. “It uses 30% less power than other presses in this format and we’ve reduced our waste tremendously because the press has such a fast makeready and a fast re-acting ink system. We’re also able to use Forest Stewardship Council-approved paper on this press to help the environment.”
 
Within the shop’s busy pressroom, the Rapida 75 offers another valuable commodity: space. The press has the smallest footprint in its class thus providing additional room for the operators to move around and the ability to produce more work in less space.
 
Easy and fast installation
 
“We are very pleased with our new KBA press as well as the service we have received,” says Vincent. “In all of our years of experience, we have never installed a press as quickly as the KBA. We received the press in a crate on a Tuesday morning and the press was feeding by Saturday morning and producing finished sheets by Monday morning. This is extremely fast!”
 
Imprimerie Vincent Printing was established in 1980 as a family-run commercial print shop in Gatineau, Quebec. Today, the 25-employee firm produces 90% of its work for designers, corporation, and ad agencies, and 10% for provincial government work. Working with one salesperson, the firm has over 1,500 loyal customers with a typical run length of 1,000 to 25,000.