A recent recruit to the European Waterless Printing Association, blanker maker Conti-Air weighed in this month with a symposium on waterless printing at its Northeim, Germany, headquarters. Speakers tackled issues such as the technology’s potential, quality and environmental protection advantages, and whether there was still room for improvement. Contributions also covered topics such as automatic printing blanket washing systems, CTP exposure technology, inks, plates and blankets used. “It was important for us to show the significance of the harmony between all the components and encourage all the participants to exchange their thoughts and ideas," ContiTech printing blankets segment manager Thomas Perkovic says. At the symposium, ContiTech introduced a new Steel CE51 printing blanket, which it says, “has proven to be a well-engineered solution for waterless newspaper printing” and is specified by KBA for its waterless presses. Specialists at the symposium tackled the possibility of further improving printing results in the waterless offset process: Wolfgang Dietrich of Baldwin Germany opened the presentations with his contribution on the technical characteristics of an automatic printing blanket washing system. Patrick Zürcher of Freiburger Druck provided an insight into the practical experience of a user in waterless newspaper printing, Holger Nussbeck and Thomas Richter of Krause presented developments in CTP, and Falk Hübner from the Sauer roller factory spoke on the evolution of ink rollers in waterless offset printing, while Thomas Albert of Siegwerk explained differences between conventional and waterless newspaper ink. Tore Harms and Shohei Koshiba of Toray Europe spoke on the product development of the waterless offset printing plate, and the symposium was rounded off with a tour of the ContiTech Northeim plant. • With environmentally friendly and climate-compatible printing one of the main challenges facing the printing industry, ContiTech has announced results of a study which showed that production of its blankets generates up to 70 per cent fewer climatically detrimental CO2 emissions than that of global standard printing blankets.