KBA North America, a leading sheetfed offset press manufacturer based in Williston, VT, has announced that Annan & Bird Lithographers, Canada’s largest and most advanced large format printer headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario, has agreed to purchase a fully-automated KBA Rapida 205 81-inch six-color sheetfed press with aqueous coater and UV interdeck dryers, the world’s largest sheetfed press. This will be the first site in Canada with the KBA Rapida 205. The press is due to be installed later this year. The announcement was made today at Graphics Canada, Canada’s largest, longest-running trade show for the graphic arts and printing industry. The show is being held November 10-12, 2005 in Toronto at the International Centre. KBA North America is located at Booth 3730. “Annan & Bird Lithographers has made a name for itself as the pre-eminent large format printer in Canada with a host of high-level accounts in North America,” says Michael Mugavero, KBA’s vice president sales. “The company continues to seek to stay ahead of its competitors and differentiate itself. The purchase of our new KBA Rapida 205 81-inch sheetfed press will certainly maintain this goal. Plus, the new Rapida 205 with all of its automation will provide the company with higher levels of efficiency and quality.” Adds John Bird, vice president of Annan & Bird Lithographers, “Throughout our history, Annan & Bird has been recognized as an industry leader in print quality and dependability. In keeping with this reputation, the new KBA 205 will once again allow us to raise our level of print quality and service well beyond industry standards.” High print quality, speed, flexibility, and greater productivity The KBA Rapida 205 81-inch six-color press will provide Annan & Bird Lithographers with a maximum sheet size of 59.5 x 81-inches running at a speed of 9,000 sph. It will give the company the flexibility to run paper and board stock ranging from 50 lb to 64 pt. Plus, this is the first press of this size to offer a wide range of automated technology, such as a fully-automatic plate changer, automatic blanket and impression cylinder washing systems, inline anilox coating system and drying options such as IR, UV, or hybrid. KBA has added its own Qualitronic inline sheet inspection system, KBA’s Densitronic quality control system, and inline perforating and slitting to the press. An automatic camera register control system provides an extremely efficient system for fast color registration on a press of this size. The press is also equipped with an automatic CCD register camera. Outstanding press features make this press second to none Annan & Bird Lithographers was attracted to the Rapida 205 for a number of reasons. First, the new press will allow the firm to produce extra large format jobs with extremely high print quality and low make-ready times in a highly-automated 81-inch press format. Second, since the press’s output by printed area is equal to running four 40-inch presses, the Rapida 205 can print with less manpower and greater productivity thus providing a fast ROI. Or in other words: a Rapida 205 is equal to a 41” press running at 36,000 sph. Third, its high degree of automation brings massive efficiencies in overall make-ready time allowing Annan & Bird Lithographers to produce more jobs faster with higher throughput. Two KBA presses to be networked together for higher productivity Annan & Bird Lithographers has forged a solid working partnership with KBA North America after having installed a KBA Rapida 162 six-color 64” large format sheetfed press in March 2004. Annan & Bird purchased the KBA 162 sheetfed press to produce poster and display work. The KBA Rapida 162 press features a full UV interdeck system, which allows the firm to run paper, plastic, foil, and synthetic papers. With the installation of the new Rapida 205 81-inch sheetfed press this winter, Annan & Bird Lithographers will be able to network together both the Rapida 162a and the new press, enabling the Rapida 205’s Densitronic S system to be used for both. The Densitronic S is a measuring and control system which is able to measure not only color densities in control strips, but also spectral and colorimetric values within an image. The KBA Densitronic S density and color measuring control system and CIPLink with online integration as well as the Logotronic Professional management system together with the unique Qualitronic II inline sheet inspection system will bring Annan & Bird noticeable productivity gains. Established 17 years ago, Annan & Bird Lithographers is a leader in the printing industry. The family-owned business focuses on commercial, trade, and packaging printing for customers in North America. It has over 130 employees. In addition to the new KBA 162a six-color press, the firm utilizes several other sheetfed presses: three 40-inch five- and six- color presses; two six- and seven-color 57” presses, and one seven-color 78” sheetfed press.