On 1 March last year, leading press manufacturer KBA and Chicago-based R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company (RRD), the world’s biggest print group, announced that they had entered a collaborative alliance to develop, manufacture and launch promising new digital printing systems.

Just over 14 months later the product of this alliance – the RotaJET 76 – was received with keen interest when it made its debut at Drupa.

Built at KBA’s main production plant in Würzburg, the RotaJET 76 stands for quality, performance and cost efficiency in digital inkjet print production. It unites KBA’s unique know-how as the market leader in high-quality web offset press engineering with RRD’s in-depth expertise and longstanding experience in the development and industrial application of inkjet technology complete with the attendant hardware and workflows. The American-German partnership has enabled KBA to optimise digital technology that has already been successfully deployed by RR Donnelley, and to make it accessible to other users.

Thomas J Quinlan III, president and CEO of RR Donnelley, and Mary Lee Schneider, president of Digital Solutions and chief technology officer of RRD, dropped by the KBA stand for a chat with management whilst at Drupa and were visibly impressed by the outcome of their joint endeavours and the outstanding team spirit demonstrated by the American and German development engineers.