At the first official get-together of the current KBA Cortina users from in northern Europe recently, KBA pulled the rug from under the speculation and rumours of a possible withdrawal from the future-oriented waterless offset technology.
The waterless pioneers of the newspaper branch attending the user meeting were treated to a production demonstration on a prototype printing unit for a triple-width Cortina 6/2, which has been tested with very good results recently.
KBA intends to offer the Cortina 6/2 with an identically high level of automation where a triple-width configuration is an interesting project option, the company says.
“It will no doubt prove the most sensible choice for certain production requirements and at the same time permits further savings in terms of investment outlay, space and power consumption,” says a spokesman.
The first serious enquiries regarding the compact Cortina jumbo have already been received.
KBA marketing director Klaus Schmidt pointed out at the meeting that in addition to waterless pioneer Toray, two of the world's three leading manufacturers of plates for the newspaper industry are also showing an increased interest in the waterless offset process.
At Kodak, for example, the development of a waterless plate suitable for newspaper printing has been pursued for some time in cooperation with KBA and is to be continued through to a marketable product, he says.
And the service life of the waterless plates, at more than 150,000 cylinder revolutions in newspaper printing and even more on semicommercial coated papers, is similarly no longer a source of worry for the user.
