At the commissioning of the new Rapida 105 (left to right): Sven Strzelczyk, sales director, Koenig & Bauer; Oleg Gospodinov, company director, Diana; Fjodor Smirnov, general director, Koenig & Bauer (RU); and Maxim Kruglov, head of sales, Koenig & Bauer (RU). The company’s printers can be seen in the background.

Russian packaging printer sets course for further growth

• The company's second Rapida press
• Comprehensive features for packaging printing
• Significant boost to productivity

Production based on the first sheetfed offset press from the new Rapida 105 series in Russia was recently launched by the print company ‘Diana’, a specialist supplier of board and corrugated packaging for the food and non-food industries in the city of Ivanovo. The press concerned is a six-colour configuration with additional coater and extended delivery. It is the company’s second Rapida press and joins a half-format model installed on a previous occasion.

Pile heights up to 1.6 metres

The Rapida 105 can handle a maximum sheet format of 740 × 1,050 mm and has been placed on a 555 mm plinth to accommodate packaging printing. This allows it to process piles up to 1.6 metres in height. The extensive list of equipment feature includes CleanTronic washing systems, EasyClean ink ducts, lowerable non-stop rollers and VariDry IR/hot-air dryers in the swan neck and extended delivery. Inline colour measurement using QualiTronic ColorControl guarantees a high quality of the printed and coated sheets. In addition, a tag inserter distinguishes the good production from sheets identified as waste, for example when starting production of a job. The Rapida 105 receives press presetting instructions from the Diana pre-press department via CIPLink X.

The print company Diana was founded in 2008 and has exhibited dynamic growth ever since. With Ivanovo being a hub for the textiles industry, packaging for this sector accounts for a large proportion of the product portfolio. Ikea and Askona, the largest mattress manufacturer in Russia, are also among the company’s big-name customers.

A talent for complex packaging designs

Many of the packaging designs handled by Diana are far more complex than a standard folding carton. Diana operates its own packaging design office, and considers complex designs as one of its key strengths. Colour capabilities, interesting finishing options and the processing of microflute substrates also play a central role.

Diana is growing both in terms of its product quality and its production volume. As director Oleg Gospodinov sums it up: “Over the past two years, we have tripled the quantities of board and coated papers that we process. Our production and storage floor space has similarly increased threefold.” And in this the innovative Rapida technology has played a decisive role.