Xuzhou Press Media Group is moving into China's flourishing semi-commercial sector and targeting further growth with a heatset Comet from Koenig & Bauer AG (KBA). The new press with one reelstand, printing tower, folder and dryer will come on stream early next year in the rapidly expanding industrial city of Xuzhou in the north of Jiangsu province, eastern China.

Continuing a successful alliance
This will be Xuzhou Press Media Group's second Comet press following the commissioning in 2001 of a larger model with four reelstands, two towers and two folders, but no semi-commercial package. Alongside its own regional title, the top-selling Xuzhou Daily, the group also prints the People's Daily, Xinhua Daily and others. The city of Xuzhou with some ten million inhabitants is a traffic hub linked by motorway and rail to other big cities like Shanghai, and also has a domestic airport.

Xuzhou Daily president Liu Ming says: “What informed our choice of press were the Comet's superb performance and first-class print quality, and the competent service provided, which underscored KBA's outstanding reputation in the international newspaper industry. When we set out to address the mounting demand for semi-commercials we did a lot of market research and came to the conclusion that KBA offered the best technology for our purposes. The heatset Comet will enable our printing plant to handle new production specs.”