Cruising up the Dutch canals to where cameras rock

Oct 22, 2014 at 01:42 pm by Staff


Belgian family-owned news publisher De Persgroep has a reputation for quality and innovation which makes it an ideal reference site.

At its headquarters outside Brussels it has been a pioneer of waterless printing with a KBA Cortina the centrepiece of its Lokeren Eco Print Centre.

So with 7000 newspaper people in Amsterdam for the World Publishing Expo last week, the group’s Amsterdam print site was a great destination for guests of registration systems specialist QI Press Controls.

And both QI – which takes customers and prospects there regularly – and De Persgroup Printing director Ruud de Klerk were on familiar ground when three canal boats and 160 guests made their way from the RAI exhibition centre to the plant in the Amstel business park. Getting there was at least half the fun, with guests dined and serenaded on a canal tour of the city.

At the end of a small canal off the river, the plant is impressive: De Klerk credits the QI equipment installed progressively since 2011 with a 50 per cent reduction in start-up waste, a 40 per cent reduction in manning and a two-year ROI, and has his presentation off pat (you can see an October 2013 version of it here). Next stage will to centralise control of the four presses with the possibility of eliminating printers at the folders.

De Klerk urged guests to prepare printers and works councils for the installation, ensuring they have “interesting and nice jobs” and a product ambassador.

One of the things he likes he likes about the Dutch developer is the way its ongoing development contributes to their continuous improvement, and QI had the new “all purpose” IDS-3D camera to show on one tower of De Persgroep’s substantial manroland Colorman line.

Cameras of the video variety came between guests and the technology, with live footage streamed to screens to one side of the console area, but with continuing hospitality and the national soccer team’s 2-0 defeat by Iceland – for which production of local daily de Volksrant waited – to occupy them, that didn’t seem to matter.

Peter Coleman


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