Prominent introductions: Austria welcomes the first COLORMAN, XXL autoprint, commissioned at Herold Druck und Verlag AG in Vienna.

In late December 2010, the printing company Herold, specialized in newspapers and supplements (e.g. "Wiener Zeitung", "Die Presse" and "Heute") successfully commissioned a new COLORMAN, XXL autoprint for its daily operations. The new press will operate parallel to an existing COLORMAN, printing products with greater speed and cost-effectiveness. Herold has a reputation as an innovator; three years ago, the company already introduced the UV drying process in its quality sector. For 17 years, the Viennese company has counted on its partnership with manroland for innovative printing technologies and project management. For Ing. Leopold Kurz, CEO of Herold, the installation of the COLORMAN, XXL autoprint further bolstered his confidence: "It was a fully customized start to 2011. We are extremely pleased with the manroland staff involved in this project. We had already met most of the colleagues during previous installations and valued their work as a strong team." On-site training courses were offered parallel to the initial start-up at Herold, clearly the right decision, Kurz has determined. "Many more of our staff members could gain access to information about the project than we could have reached through external training."

Benefits for readers and advertising customers

With the COLORMAN, XXL autoprint, Herold wants to provide a genuine added value for readers and advertising customers. What motivated the choice for the solution from Augsburg was plain and simple: "manroland's plate logistics had us convinced from the very beginning. We followed the development of APL very closely in recent years and observed the initial start-up of a number of presses in Germany. We are certain that the COLORMAN, XXL autoprint will also develop its full potential at our site. That entails both greater speed in production and greater competitiveness in pricing on the market. As a contract printer without an internal publishing house, Herold needs to distinguish itself in the market based on performance features, as Kurz emphasizes: "We will be able to process up to three daily newspapers on a single machine, to the satisfaction of all our customers. That was simply inconceivable with the old machine configurations." Based on positive experiences with the COLORMAN, Herold decided on a COLORMAN, XXL autoprint, also with satellite design, to continue capitalizing on the excellent register accuracy and print quality of this system.

Pinpoint precision in installation and production

The installation requirements for the project can be safely described as "complex". In Herold's existing production facility near Vienna Central Station (currently under construction), the installation of the new printing system and necessary peripherals (galleries, ventilation, A/C, etc.) took place while two existing presses simultaneously printed two to three daily newspapers, depending on the day of the week.

The new COLORMAN, XXL autoprint comprises two printing towers and extensive autoprint equipment. With its robotic arms, APL (AutomaticPlateLoading) reduces makeready times to a minimum. The Inline Control systems QuickStart for pre-inking, InlineCutoff Control for automatic cut-off compensator control, InlineTension Control for web tension and InlineTemperature Control for the dampening solution ensure greater production speed, due to consistent quality and significantly less start-up waste.

Flexible press configuration

Herold would not be Herold without a strong future orientation. The Viennese company chose to retain maximum flexibility for future expansion possibilities: for example, continuous automation of the production workflow, from customer data input all the way to pressproofing. One building block is the printnet OM output control from ppi Media, which Herold ordered at the IFRA 2010. The printing volume has the potential to be doubled with two additional printing towers and a folder. For logistics, in addition to the fully automated plate system APL logistics, the AUROSYS material logistics system can also be retrofitted. Planned for mid 2011, Herold will be the first Austrian printing company to operate a reel storage facility equipped with a fully automated crane system: up to 600 tons of paper in a tight space will be available, with fully automatic supply to the presses.