There was more to celebrate than just a new press when Mediengruppe Pressedruck marked the commissioning of its new double-width Koenig & Bauer Commander CL.

The publisher of the Augsburger Allgemeine, Main-Post and Südkurier newspapers is changing from Rhenish to the more compact Berlin format with the move, which takes place amid organisational and management change. New management teams have been named – separating publishing from radio & TV – charged with accelerating development of digital products across the group.

And yes, since family-owned Pressedruck owns the biggest newspapers in the (rival) press-manufacturing cities of Augsburg and Würzburg, someone was going to be disappointed by the growing standardisation.

GXpress visited the print centres in Gelnhausen (Druck-und-Pressehaus Naumann), Aschaffenburg (Main-Echo) and Würzburg (Pressedruck’s Main Post) in 2021, where the common denominator is at least two towers of Koenig & Bauer’s Commander CL, installed since 2014 (see our report here).

Another common denominator of course, is the highly editionised newspapers that are keeping print alive in the DACH (Germany-Austria-Switzerland) region.

The new Commander CL exists to continue that trend, and depends on features such as automatic plate changing and predictive maintenance, with setup times, waste, and downtime “sustainably minimised”. Housed in a new print centre, the new press – which went live last September – replaces a 20-year-old Colorman XXL, made by local Augsburg hero manroland Goss (ouch!).

An address from the Bavarian media minister and blessings from leading Catholic and Protestant clerics emphasised the strategic significance of the event, attended by about 100 invited guests.

The 4/2 press consists of three towers and two folders, backed up by comprehensive QIPC control systems with the focus on flexibility, reliability and the use of intelligent features for minimal setup times and excellent print quality. Automation functions range from automatic plate changing to precise colour density control and future-proof predictive maintenance.

Integrating the press into existing infrastructure required “the utmost precision” with technology head Andreas Ullmann speaking of impressive progress and “first-class” collaboration with the maker, whose Würzburg headquarters was visited by a group of 40 employees.

Koenig & Bauer chief financial officer Alexander Blum spoke of the cooperation and commitment: “I am delighted that our collaboration over the past 24 months or so has run so smoothly, and that we have reached our goal together, right on target,” he said.

Among guests at the “cracking event” was Sarah Lesting who leads WAN-Ifra’s Distripress/World Printers Forum, to whom we’re delighted to afford the final word. “The engineering powerhouse behind this new newsprint facility is absolutely mind-blowing,” she said in a social media post: “three massive printing towers… printing 18 different local editions six nights a week, a total overnight circulation of 140,000 newspapers operating at a blistering speed of up to 55,000 cph.

“Seeing this level of investment in the world of print is incredibly exciting.”

Peter Coleman