On the first day of IfraExpo 2003 in Leipzig Dutch printer Rodi Rota-tiedruk in Broek op Langedijk near Amsterdam placed an order for a 48-page KBA Cortina. Dick Ranzijn, publisher and managing director of Rodi Rotatiedruk, said ”We first saw the Cortina at Drupa 2000 and have been following its progress closely, from the initial tests on a one-across pilot press at KBA’s plant in Würzburg to full-scale pro-duction on a two-across version at Reiff Zeitungsdruck in Offenburg. In that time enormous progress has also been made with waterless inks. Since an extension to our existing press would not deliver the colour and quality enhancement we need we’d been looking at a number of alternatives, but we kept coming back to the Cortina and its revolutionary waterless technology. Its fast makereadies, semi-commercial capability and reduced manning requirements fit in per-fectly with our proposed objectives, namely to cut waste and costs while enhancing colour, speed and quality.” Fast growth with frees When Dick Ranzijn started up in business publishing a free newspa-per back in the early seventies he was one of the first in the Nether-lands to enter this market. In 1978 he founded his own publishing house, Rodi Media, and by 1983 he had not only added more titles but also built up a pre-press department and a sales organisation for door-to-door distribution in the north of the country. A few years later he expanded his activities with the launch of a Sunday free. In 1989, with a total weekly circulation of 250,000, Mr Ranzijn established a printing company, Rodi Rotatiedruk, with one single-width King Press. Five years later print output topped the 1 million mark and the press, despite an extension, was no longer able to cope. In 1997 a second-hand one-across press with a maximum output of 80 tabloid pages, eight of them full colour, was purchased from the Orlando Sentinal in Florida, USA. Rodi Media now publishes six free local and nine free Sunday newspapers with a total weekly circulation of more than 600,000 copies. An equal volume of contract work has raised its weekly output to more than 1.2 million copies. 96-page tabloids The new two-across KBA Cortina, which is slated for delivery in summer 2004, will have a 578mm (22¾”) cut-off on a cylinder circum-ference of 1,156mm (45½”), a maximum web width of 1,680mm (66”) and a maximum hourly output of 35,000 48-page broadsheets or 96-page full-colour tabloids. It will be configured as a single-floor press with three four-high mini-towers, reelstands and turner bars, one folder superstructure with two formers, a length/cross perforator, cut-off register controls and a KF 3 jaw folder (2:3:3). Other features will include semi-automatic plate changing, automatic ink pumping and blanket washing. Copies can be delivered stitched or with a quarter-fold. The two control consoles will be linked to a service PC for online maintenance.