February 28, 2002 - Around 1,000 visitors from 30 countries and four continents attended the Technology Forum 2002 held in the Offenbach Graphic Center between January 21 and February 5, 2002 and were shown future-oriented solutions for packaging printing. Together with Agfa Deutschland GmbH, MAN Roland Druckmaschinen AG staged the presentation in its demonstration and training center and attracted specialists from all sectors of the packaging industry – label printers, folding box producers, corrugated board printers, right through to services providers and materials manufacturers. In cooperation with Agfa and 20 other prominent suppliers Twenty prominent suppliers to the graphics industry – MAN Roland’s system partners – also took part, demonstrating their range of goods and services for packaging printing: board, inks, coatings, printing aids, blankets, rollers, drying systems, logistics systems, die-cutting equipment, and much more. The presentations, given in German, English, French, Italian, and also Russian, were varied in form: speeches providing an overview of the industry’s current situation were followed by applications-oriented live presentations on the machines and systems installed in the Graphic Center. Talks were also given about the concepts of printing plant networking and digital printing for packaging applications which provided an insight into new and future-oriented approaches to packaging production. The focal point of the live presentations concerning prepress was the Artwork company’s workflow solutions optimized for packaging printing linked to the high-performance computer-to-plate systems from Agfa. Digital platemaking for the 100 x 140 cm sheet size widely used in packaging printing was demonstrated with the platesetters “Galileo” and “Xcalibur”. All three MAN Roland press models for packaging specialists were in production And the focal point of printing per se was directed at the three press models of greatest interest to packaging printers. The ROLAND 500, 700 and 900 were running typical packaging jobs – with full solids, special colors, windows, fine reverse lettering, single and double applications of coating including gold, primer and UV. This was all done alternating between thin label material, thick solid board, and G-flute micro-corrugated board. Great interest was also aroused by the ROLAND 700 linked to the AUPASYS logistics system which is a fully-automated, unmanned, pile handling system which also features a non-stop pile changing facility at the delivery. Yet another major attraction was the Digital Printing Center where the DICOpack ran linked to a pattern plotter for extremely short runs. A demonstration of the WSD system rounded off the event. WSD enables perforating, cutting and creasing to be performed inline on a sheetfed press. It is possible for instance to die-cut labels inline and save a separate postpress operation. Exceeded all expectations The expectations of the Technology Forum Packaging 2002 organizers as regards the number of visitors and customer response were exceeded. Michael Nitsche, MAN Roland’s Product Marketing Manager, was responsible for the event and his summary was extremely positive: “It was a great event. There was a real buzz and a packed agenda, but still all our visitors had enough time for an intensive exchange of views with our specialists, which made it a genuine forum. Practically all of the leading packaging producers came along and the general feedback made one thing very clear to us: MAN Roland is regarded as the leading manufacturer of packaging printing systems.”