March 16, 2008 - KBA North America, a global press manufacturer based in Williston, Vermont, will be exhibiting its entire range of cutting-edge sheetfed presses at Drupa 2008, from the compact 20-inch to its large format units, with a raft of new features and technological innovations. The focus of its huge 36,800 sq ft stand in Hall 16 will be on new productivity- and efficiency-enhancing automation modules, inline finishing, inline quality management and green printing technologies. Drupa, scheduled for May 29 to June 11, is the industry’s premier printing event held every four years in Düsseldorf, Germany.

Four years ago at Drupa 2004 KBA set the tone with the introduction of the 18,000sph Rapida 105 high-performance 41-inch sheetfed press sporting a number of unique features such as sidelay free Sensoric Infeed System infeed. More recently KBA unveiled a new dedicated plate-cylinder drive that allows simultaneous plate changing. Rigorously proven in more than two years of pressroom trials, DriveTronic SPC delivers an enormous productivity boost where the production routine entails frequent job changes. At Drupa 2008 visitors can expect even more new features to be unveiled immediately prior to the exhibition.

KBA continues to be the acknowledged market and technology leader in large format press models and this will be demonstrated throughout the booth with exciting innovations. KBA is still the only manufacturer offering 4/4 perfector presses in this format class. In Düsseldorf, commercial printers will have the opportunity to see the many benefits already enjoyed by countless packaging and book printers.

KBA will also be demonstrating its ongoing commitment to greener production processes such as anilox keyless inking, a technology it pioneered some twenty years ago and which has since been adopted by other press manufacturers. Alongside its eco-accredited conventional Rapidas it will be showing four presses that combine quality with the ecology of keyless, waterless technology: a Genius 52 UV, a Rapida 74 Gravuflow, a 74 Karat DI (all sheetfed) and a Cortina (web).

JDF workflows and computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) will also play a key role at the KBA exhibit at Drupa. KBA will be offering competent advice and a wide choice of packages for all forms of printshop networking and organization, including Web2Print.