Under a new non-exclusive agreement manroland will integrate and resell ABB solutions within its printnet product family, allowing newspaper printing companies to benefit from the new partnership providing high-end process management and postpress solutions.

"We are glad to offer our customers this groundbreaking completion of our product portfolio," says Lodovico de Briganti, Vice President Marketing and Sales printnet at manroland. "High-quality tools for planning, managing, and integrating all resources within the whole production process will make their businesses more professional, transparent, economical, in one word: more successful." Günther Glas, Executive Vice President Business Unit printnet Webfed at manroland, adds: "Our cooperation with ABB means bundled expertise from leading companies, a highly professional offer from one source, clearly defined contacts and interfaces. It will make manroland equipment even more useful and attractive for our customers."

"We are delighted to be able to complete the manroland product portfolio with one of our absolute strengths: integrated system solutions for effective and efficient process management," says Boris Falk, Head of Sales at ABB's Printing Center of Excellence. Christian Villiger, Global Head of ABB's activities in printing, adds: "The cooperation will enlarge our installed base for software solutions. This is good news for present and future customers, as every additional customer brings new ideas that further improve the system capabilities."

ABB complements manroland's product range with solutions for production planning, insert management, and vehicle planning. printnet Cockpit is the core of the newspaper production, one instrument to manage all resources and plan all processes, even for several sites, from prepress through press and mailroom to distribution. printnet InsertManager is the tool that finishes with the often chaotic insert management by integrating the whole insert business workflow from marketing to production. printnet DeliveryPlanner provides order-oriented distribution management by integrating and visualizing all production and transport systems.

printnet is manroland's workflow system for the complete newspaper production chain. It integrates solutions for the publishing market through manroland's subsidiary ppi Media, for the printing process through its inhouse development, and now for postpress integration and delivery planning through the cooperation with ABB. With these "best-of-breed" solutions manroland can offer its customers overall management of the entire newspaper production process.