Auckland, New Zealand, known as the City of Sails and having the highest per capita ownership of sailing boats in the world, now also has its first KBA Rapida 105 installed locally at Amcor Cartons. Amcor is one of the largest packaging groups in the world and early indications are that this new press is quickly becoming Amcor's flagship press in the Auckland plant.

Dave Wilson, manufacturing manager at Amcor, speaking recently to the New Zealand Printer magazine says the new machine comes as a response to increasing demand. He says, "Increasing capacity is important but we are also looking for more reliability, colour consistency and quality enhancement. We know the KBA Rapida 105 will give us that."

Dave Lewis, general manager sheetfed presses for KBA Australasia, says, "We are very pleased to get our second sheet fed press order with the Amcor group following on from the very successful Rapida 142 installation at the Amcor Botany plant in Sydney. We are confident that Amcor Auckland will be very happy with this new press and what it will do for them."
 
The new press is a fully specified Rapida 105 with six printing units plus a coating unit and extended delivery housing the drying system for the press. The press is raised up on special cast blocks eliminating the need for a costly concrete plinth and can handle substrates up to 1.2mm thickness. The feeder is the well proven KBA DriveTronic feeder system with the pile lift, feeder head and feed table all driven by electronic motors instead of the mechanical system used by KBA's competitors. This gives a constant jerk-free lift of the feeder pile and eliminates the normal mechanical drive components which can give problems with vibration and can also wear out quickly.
The press is also equipped with KBA's Densitronic system for measuring densities and making on-line adjustments to the inking profile of each printing unit. Densitometry is a first for Amcor in Auckland and this feature is one that Dave Wilson is particularly excited about. He says "The Densitronic feature on the new KBA press, we believe, will give us faster make-readies and much better colour consistency. This is one of the options on the press that we believe will take our quality to another level."

The new press has a top speed of 16,500 sheets per hour and during a recent visit following the commissioning of the press, Dave Lewis saw the press running at close to 16,000 sheets per hour. Lewis said, "This has been one of the best new press start-ups I have seen. Usually it takes a customer time to get to high speed production especially with a brand of press they are not familiar with. But the Amcor press operators and production management staff have got to grips with the new technology very quickly and they have a high speed, high quality attitude."

Dave Wilson indicated so far from what we have seen the KBA Rapida 105 will be a tremendous asset in maintaining and improving our position in the local market.