Waterless coldset offset printing offers many advantages in terms of print quality, start-up and production waste, economy and ecology. This is confirmed day in, day out by the 20 operating companies who use the KBA Cortina, with a total of 90 productive printing towers.

In coldset printing, the in-line finishing of the printed products with an integrated varnishing unit for water-based varnish and an IR dryer is a further unique feature of the KBA Cortina, which produces without any damping units.  

In 2013, Rheinisch-Bergische Druckerei GmbH (RBD) in Düsseldorf had ordered its first varnishing unit with an IR dryer from KBA, and put it into service in February 2014. In-line varnish finishing has been in daily use ever since then and, in conjunction with natural papers, gives a wide spectrum of special-interest publications, special advertising formats like MultiView or the newspaper magazine CORTISSIMO a unique touch-and-feel as well as a very high-quality, sustainable appearance. Together with the print quality of the waterless Cortina, which cannot be achieved in coldset by wet offset presses, new standards have been set in the high-quality advertising market.   

This encouraging experience recently led RBD Managing Director Matthias Tietz to invest in a further varnishing unit for his Cortina press in order to double its finishing capacity from August 2017 onwards. By investing in this expansion, RBD confirms the success story of in-line finishing with the Cortina. Besides the five varnishing units already installed by several Cortina users, others are in the order phase.   

Matthias Tietz: "Thanks to the variety of formats that the Cortina can process, the production of A4 magazine products has developed into an economically interesting product branch for our company. The varnishing of printed products is becoming increasingly popular. Today, the current limitation of 32 pages prevents us from giving a positive answer to the numerous requests concerning magazines with up to 64 pages. We assume that this service will be willingly accepted by the market." 

As a large order recently received from Belgium shows, ambitious media companies continue to appreciate the advantages of the KBA Cortina waterless compact rotary press. In a highly competitive print market with innovative products, it offers its users, like no other coldset press, all of the options needed to reach new target groups, to give the customers added value and to successfully position their own company in the media concert of the 21st century.