Two high-speed sheetfed perfectors at Ive Group’s new 42,000m2 production and logistics hub bring a new dimension to cover printing.
The Koenig & Bauer Rapida 106X perfectors at the site in Sydney’s Kemps Creek run at up to 20,000 sheets an hour to provide covers and other material for heatset-printed magazines.
One is a ten-colour press with perfecting and a coater – seen as ideal for the production of magazine covers – while the other is a complex seven-colour hybrid press with a double coater, triple extended delivery, and the maker’s DriveTronic SPC system for simultaneous plate changing.
Both are the first sheetfed offset presses in Australia to achieve production speeds of up to 20,000 sph.
Their commissioning at the new production site was an occasion for celebration: Ive Group director Paul Selig and managing director Matt Aitken are pictured (second and third from left) with Rayne Simpson (K&B Australia); Dietmar Heyduck, Kay Halboth and Andreas Friedrich (Koenig & Bauer Sheetfed); and K&B Australia managing director Graham Harris.
Now Australia’s largest diversified marketing company, ASX-listed Ive Group employs more than 2100 people across 22 sites.
The newly constructed Kemps Creek facility also delivers packaging capacity in New South Wales that exactly mirrors that in Victoria. “This enables us to serve national brands and drastically accelerate our time-to-market once again,” Ive managing director Matt Aitken says.
He admits the installation does more than expand commercial and packaging printing capacity, taking it to a new level. “The investment we have made with these presses is creating a genuine 'wow' factor for our customers,” he says.
The seven-colour Rapida hybrid also delivers “supreme” print quality with flexible inline finishing for the premium packaging segment.
Pictured: Ive management and production team with the ten-colour Rapida 106 X