The engineers at manroland are working with Weiss-Druck in Monschau, Germany, on the next quantum leap in commercial printing in XXL. Their focus is the first 96-page LITHOMAN S in long grain with a web width of 2,860 millimeters. This will once again enable new levels of productivity in high-volume commercial printing.

Superior productivity
From 0 to 4.32 million pages per hour – that is the acceleration at which Weiss-Druck will start into the future. With this investment, the printing company advances to print-run volumes that until now were reserved for gravure printing. A well-prepared leap in performance: more than 90 percent of the presses worldwide with a web width of over two meters have been developed and constructed by manroland. The 2.86 meters web width will set a new benchmark. "With this investment, our company continues its strategy of early investments in innovative technologies. The close cooperation with manroland primarily benefits our customers, as the 96-page LITHOMAN S allows us to keep offering the highest degree of quality, flexibility and effectiveness," says managing director Georg Weiss. Peter Kuisle, Vice President for webfed sales at manroland, comments on the general outlook in the industry: "Many people in the industry think that the installation of 80- and 96-page web presses on the market will result in further consolidations among printing companies. Observers should make a distinction when considering the topic of surplus capacities in webfed and sheetfed offset. In a recession, there is a decreased demand for print products, thus increasing the pricing pressure. manroland views itself as an opinion and technology leader in the printing industry, and the excellent performance of the German printing companies clearly gives them a leading-edge status. Who else is in a position to advance development if not manroland together with its customers? The accompanying cost reductions also allow print products to stay positioned as an attractive and efficient medium of communication."

Serial customers by conviction
Weiss-Druck, a family-owned business in its fourth generation, has approximately 1,400 employees in 30 companies (pre-press, printing companies, and publishing houses) at locations in both the eastern and western parts of Germany. The production sites for newspaper printing are located in Neuwiese-Bergen, Saxony, with additional sites for newspaper printing, as well as commercial and sheetfed printing, in Monschau in the Eifel region and in Limburg. All pre-press operations and printing companies are connected by state-of-the-art technology.