The eight-colour Rapida 106 perfector fired up by Norwegian design, print and multimedia publishing specialist 07 Gruppen AS at the end of January 2012 is already the fourth makeready world champion press from KBA to be installed since 2008. With two of these high-speed medium-format models at each of the locations Oslo and Aurskog, the biggest provider of integrated communication solutions in Scandinavia now commands a very successful quartet.

The recent installation at 07 Aurskog AS is further confirmation that more and more leading commercial and packaging printers are basing future plans on the outstanding productivity of the Rapida 106 series. In Norway, too, KBA has expanded its 3b market share significantly over the past few years. And there is still room for further improvement.

The high level of automation, fast job changes and an impressive production speed are factors which make the Rapida 106 an ideal choice particularly for industrially oriented print companies. The strengthening of the local sales and service organisation in Scandinavia (KBA-Nordic; Skotvedt & Aanesen) has made a similarly important contribution.

In five years to market leader
07 Gruppen AS was founded in Oslo just five years ago, as a joint venture of the established companies GAN Grafisk, GAN Media, Krone Trykk and PDC Tangen, but has already claimed its place at the head of the Norwegian commercial print market. Lean group structures and further strategic acquisitions have driven gradual optimisation of the product and service portfolio.

“Courage, Efficiency, Innovation”
Under the banner “Courage, Efficiency, Innovation”, a whole range of inventive concepts has been elaborated, from professional consulting through to the intermediate storage of final products. “The Pink Way” stands for individual solutions developed at 07 Gruppen for the public sector, trade associations and the whole spectrum of private, commercial and industrial customers, with the common aim of facilitating successful positioning of the individual products and services offered by those customers.

Active in offset and digital print
With the separate divisions 07 Aurskog AS, 07 Oslo AS, 07 Web AS and 07 Xpress AS, 07 Gruppen operates highly efficient production units with approx. 300 employees in Aurskog, Oslo and Kristiansand. The specialisations of the individual locations complement each other perfectly and enabled the group to record a turnover of 440 million kronor in 2011.

07 Oslo AS and 07 Aurskog AS are the pillars of the Graphic Production division. The Oslo facility focuses on advertising materials for the retail trade, flyers and covers, while Aurskog handles primarily publishing work, schoolbooks and magazines. At both locations, price pressures and ever shorter delivery times eventually made modernisation investments unavoidable.

Premiere at 07 Oslo AS
In the Drupa year 2008, 07 Oslo AS ordered two four and five-colour Rapida 106 presses with sidelay-free DriveTronic SIS infeed and fully automatic plate changing (FAPC) from KBA in quick succession. To maximise flexibility, the five-colour press was configured with a coater, and the four-colour press with the CX board-handling package. The company had no cause to regret the switch from other German and Japanese manufacturers, and the two 18,000-sph Rapidas quickly fulfilled the high expectations.

Eight and nine colours for 07 Aurskog AS
It was not long before the responsible managers at 07 Aurskog also showed interest in the Rapida 106. Managing director Asmund Krogstad: “The decision in favour of KBA at Drupa 2008 was a pointer for the whole group. Even though the typical products and thus the production conditions are very different in Oslo and Aurskog, we were confident that the Rapida 106 was similarly the right choice for us.”

Asmund Krogstad characterises the press as fast, reliable and flexible. The considerable makeready savings are another key plus: “That led us to decide on a nine-colour perfector with inline coater in 2009. The Rapida 106 enabled us to print magazines and covers in a single pass, and lent a corresponding boost to our productivity. In January 2012, we started up a second Rapida 106, this time an eight-colour perfector. We attach particular value to cutting-edge technology with practical benefit. KBA has given us both.”

Fully automation for maximum advantage
Halvor Borresen, director of IT and automation: “The range of automation modules and the associated ease of operation are major benefits of the Rapida 106. It is not without reason that it has earned the attribute 'makeready world champion'. With fully automatic FAPC plate changers, DriveTronic SIS infeed, DriveTronic SPC direct drives, DriveTronic Plate Ident, ErgoTronic ACR, QualiTronic ColorControl, DensiTronic professional and LogoTronic, we have taken all the available equipment options, and we achieve correspondingly fantastic results with regard to job changeover speed and quality control.”

15,000 sheets/h in perfecting
Print department manager Terje Pedersen is also certain that the Rapida 106 investment was the right decision: “The press has confirmed everything we had heard and seen in Oslo. With our eight and nine-colour configurations, Aurskog is ideally equipped to handle our extensive book and magazine production. Both Rapida 106 presses print in three shifts, 24 hours a day, from Monday to Friday. Our normal production runs with papers between 70 and 115 g/m², but the covers can be anything up to 350 g/m². The production speed averages at 15,000 sheets/h. For a perfector press, that is a first-class value.”