A new strategic partnership between manroland web systems GmbH and ABB Switzerland Ltd., that has been agreed at drupa, gives the two companies a strong position in the future of the retrofit business.

The partners can now offer newspaper printing customers an ideal range of modular press retrofit solutions that covers the areas of product planning, control consoles, press controls and reelstands.

First joint retrofit at Democrat&Chronicle
The first customer to be convinced of the value of the alliance is the Democrat&Chronicle in Rochester, New York. Here the partners will work together to overhaul a GEOMAN installed in 1996 with three press sections and 15 towers. Dirk Schmidtbleicher, Vice President pressupdate at manroland web systems: “the partnership is an ideal extension to our comprehensive pressupdate offer and our worldwide service business. By using ABB industry-standard components together with the know-how of manroland we can offer our customers retrofit solutions that boost their competitiveness.” Christian Villiger, Vice President and Head of ABB Printing: “Our retrofit partnership is strategic and therefore on a long-term basis. We are very happy about the good start with the retrofit order at Democrat&Chronicle in Rochester that we could book in parallel to drupa. We are grateful for the customer’s trust in us and together we will justify it.”

Modular concepts for the future of existing presses
Retrofits with manroland web systems and ABB – which are, of course, available as stand-alone solutions, too – provide long-term production stability. This is achieved by using modular industry-standard components that can be seamlessly integrated into proven press systems. The new solutions can be integrated into most newspaper printing systems. As a result, both the future-oriented ControlCenter of manroland web systems and the customized modern production management system from ABB are now available to new customer groups, too. The customer’s specific wishes will be implemented individually by the Augsburg and Swiss experts.