At the beginning of October, a group of 30 print professionals from Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador, Guatemala and Costa Rica spent a week touring German users of Rapida sheetfed offset presses to pick up practical information on state-of-the-art technology developments.

Most members of the party were either company owners, general directors or production managers. At AZ Druck und Datentechnik in Kempten, the visitors were able to watch live production on the Rapida 106 with Flying JobChange which was installed there in 2009, alongside further medium-format Rapidas with simultaneous plate change facilities (DriveTronic SPC). The next stop on the journey was aprinta in Wemding, where they were treated to a demonstration of highly efficient, large-format book production. Aprinta runs several eight-colour presses of the Rapida 162a series and is the worldwide pioneer of 4-over-4 perfecting for book printing. In Würzburg, the cradle of printing press manufacture, a stop-over at the KBA headquarters was subsequently followed up with a visit to the printing company Stürtz. Stürtz operates mainly long, highly automated Rapida perfectors in medium and large-format versions, producing well over 400 magazines and journals, more than 28 million brochures and over 8 million books each year.

The week was rounded off with a visit to the KBA sheetfed production facility in Radebeul, where the agenda included live demonstrations of the latest sheetfed offset technologies in the customer centre, as well as a tour of the factory and training centre. At the end of the day, the guests from Central and South America then set off for home with a multitude of new insights into the opportunities for all format classes.