Flexible KBA Commander CL the press of choice for new investments

Given the drastic contraction of the world market for new web press installations over the past years, there is no great meaning behind the market share figures which some manufacturers currently feature prominently in their marketing statements, especially where they relate to a limited period of just a few months or even a single year. In times of extreme reluctance to invest, one or two press orders are often already sufficient to secure a misleadingly larger share of the cake. Such snapshots generally say little about a manufacturer's longer-term technological standing on the market. A much more revealing indicator is the number of new presses delivered over a span of several years.

From 2011 to 2013, Koenig & Bauer AG (KBA) was the clear number one ahead of all domestic and foreign competitors in its traditional business field of newspaper presses, with world market shares between 35 and 40 per cent. Alongside the high-performance compact presses Commander CT and Cortina, which in the meantime count almost 50 installations worldwide, there was already increasing demand for the flexibly configured Commander CL which KBA unveiled at the World Publishing Expo in 2011.

A shift in general demand in 2014 then placed the emphasis above all on less automated presses of the lower performance classes for users in the emerging markets. This is a segment in which KBA, for economic reasons, is less involved. Correspondingly, KBA's annual market share for newspaper presses was temporarily down to below 10% last year.

In 2015, however, web offset business has returned to its customary level and KBA once more occupies the position which could be considered its rightful claim as inventor of the newspaper press. With orders from the Middle East, Germany and Asia, and a market share well in excess of 30%, KBA is again demonstrating its leadership when it comes to high-performance presses. A total of 14 Commander CL press lines have been ordered in different configurations since the official launch four years ago, and ten are already in daily production around the world. Particularly in Central Europe, but also in the USA and China, the outstanding flexibility and scalable automation options of the user-friendly Commander CL are attracting great interest wherever new investments are planned. As far as European installations are concerned, automation modules which are decisive for economical and variable newspaper production, such as plate feeders, fully automatic plate changing and control systems for register, cut-off, fan-out and colour, are today usually a standard choice. Only recently, Oppermann Druck- und Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG in Rodenberg committed for two 32-page Commander CL presses with a full automation package.