April 30, 2002 "We are highly satisfied with this IPEX 2002", says Gerd Finkbeiner, Board Chairman of the MAN Roland Group. "We had not expected such success. Our expectations regarding the sales contracts we would conclude have been exceeded. The quality of the visitors was at an extremely high level." Asked for concrete sales figures, Finkbeiner responded: "Such figures must be taken with care because they tend to be enriched with a pinch of fantasy, to put it mildly." More than 50 new features on sheet-fed presses impress visitors More concrete, certainly, are the 50-plus new features presented on the company's sheet-fed presses at IPEX. Finkbeiner's comment: "The feedback was extremely positive; the new features met with broad visitor interest and were judged very favourably. Our visitors were particularly impressed with by the InlineSorter on the ROLAND 700 and with its outstanding gloss application, which is due to a new screen ruler. And the ROLAND 500, which ran at 18,000 sheets despite Hybrite inks, coating and label paper, astonished even competitors." Second ROLAND 500 for Bretschneider, Braunschweig "We are especially pleased that one printer ordered a second ROLAND 500 already", Finkbeiner continues. The Richard Bretschneider printing company in Braunschweig (Brunswick), Germany is so enthusiastic about its first ROLAND 500, which started producing in September 2001, that it signed a contract at IPEX for the purchase of a second ROLAND 500. Bretschneider Managing Director Klaus-Jürgen Eggen and his appointed successor Joachim Bretschneider expect the investment to boost flexibility and production. The 250-staff company concentrates largely on high-quality packaging. 20 sheet-fed printing units for big MAN Roland customer Man Sang, Hong Kong "Another absolute exhibition highlight for us was the order for twenty printing units by the Man Sang group of printing companies in Hong Kong“, Gerd Finkbeiner emphasizes. MAN Roland's biggest Asian customer in sheet-feed presses ordered four additional systems from Offenbach – one ROLAND 906, two ROLAND 705 and one ROLAND 704. The ROLAND 700 presses work with full PECOM process electronics networking. Man Sang is already using 46 printing units in ROLAND 700 and ROLAND 200 machines from MAN Roland. The group, with production sites in Dongguan and Panyu, prints a broad spectrum of products including, for example, gift paper, greeting cards, packaging and magazines. Almost 40 printing units to Scandinavia Almost 40 printing units have been ordered by customers in Scandinavian countries alone. The ROLAND 500 exhibited in Birmingham goes to Sweden. Another ROLAND 500 was sold to Estonia. DICOweb focal point of the web range and star of the fair "The central visitor attraction of our web press appearance was the DICOweb“, says Finkbeiner. "And, as at drupa 2000, it was a magnet of the fair in general." For the first time, the computer-to-press system was on show as a 16-page heatset machine. The exhibited press will be installed this summer at Stämpfli-Druck in Bern, Switzerland. The Digital Change Over (DICO) concept also decided the MAS Matbaacilik A.S. in Istanbul to order a heat-set DICOweb in 16-page format. The system will be configured much like the one at IPEX. It is intended for printing small circulation magazines. MAS Matbaacilik further prints quality brochures and art books. The 60 staff are currently producing with three sheet-fed presses. The company is equipped for state-of-the-art prepress work, which is the optimum basis for its forthcoming move into digital printing. ROTOMAN for Lietuvos Rytas in Vilnius, Lithuania "The ROTOMAN is also much in demand still", observes Finkbeiner, pleased. "We will deliver a press of our 16-page web offset line to the largest printing company in the Baltic region, Lietuvos Rytas in Vilnius, Lithuania." It will enable the company, which prints Lithuania's leading daily, to further extend its capacity for magazines and advertising material. Lietuvos Rytas has been an MAN Roland customer for some ten years, and currently uses a ROLAND 200, two ROLAND 300 and a ROTOMAN. The ROTOMAN it ordered in Birmingham is equipped with five double printing units, and is planned to start producing sometime in the first half of 2003. Many projects being worked on Finkbeiner: "Just as pleasing and important as our sales we found the many intensive discussions and contacts with customers and business partners from all over the world, producing a wealth of important feedback. Numerous promising projects, interesting ideas and new business models have ensued here. Apart from that, we have learned a lot by listening - learning about things on our customers' minds, what customers want and need. And this information is one of the most important sources of our success – because our success is nothing else than the success of our customers." New design expresses corporate unity Now more than ever before, the corporate unity of MAN Roland, encompassing sheet offset, web offset and digital printing divisions, is also visually apparent: as an outward sign, in "new clothes", so to speak, for the multitude of new features in all MAN Roland printing systems, all MAN Roland presses at IPEX presented themselves in a new design. Professor George Teodorescu, who created it, explained at the press conference the intention behind it. The new design is meant to signal a new "culture" at MAN Roland, making the company a pioneer of modern industrial design. Professor Teodorescu sees it as a great success that an enterprise with more than 10,000 employees worldwide has committed itself to an overall styling for all its machines. He considers this consensus a further sign of the optimistic attitude, the clearly apparent "new spirit" prevailing at MAN Roland. PrintCity realizes future-oriented developments "I think we have learned from drupa 2000, with the consequence that we made Print Factory - the heart of PrintCity - the central part of our appearance at IPEX", says Finkbeiner. "And now PrintCity is getting to brim with life." A new colour reproduction process for packaging applications is a perfect example of a typical PrintCity action. It was developed by MY Cartons, a renowned Dutch packaging group, with intensive participation by PrintCity partners Sun Chemical, Artwork Systems and MAN Roland. Combining frequency-modulated halftone and six-colour printing, the FMsix system reduces to three the number of additional special colours. By the addition of orange and green or blue to the process colours cyan, yellow, magenta and black, most of the special-colour hues of the Pantone series can be reproduced. This was impressively demonstrated by a multiple job comprising different brand packages on one sheet, which normally would have to be printed with 35 special-colour inks. Especially in packaging printing, where the use of special colours still predominates, the new method makes production much easier and more efficient. Many ink changes with the attendant makeready and washing times can be eliminated by the use of FMsix.