As part of its 60th anniversary celebrations, the Bombay Master Printers’ Association organized a study tour of Heidelberger Drucksmaschinen and the city after which the company is named. The trip combined insights to press manufacture and design, new innovative applications as well as extensive and detailed discussions of the print industry, short run and packaging printing and digital print.
Expert educational presentations of the Heidelberg Prinect workflow, coatings and UV coatings, in-line value-add finishing processes and new concepts such as augmented reality were both discussed and demonstrated during visits to Heidelberg customers in the commercial, packaging and digital domains and on visits to partners such as IST Metz. Before returning back to India, the team also took some time out and visited the famous Heidelberg castle. The BMPA is one of the most active and interesting print owners associations in the country and this was one more excellent project that it undertook and which was again enthusiastically supported by its members. There is a long list of people in BMPA and Heidelberg India and in Germany who made this event happen and with grace. Nevertheless it seems that the joint working of Nitin Shah of the BMPA and Peter Rego of Heidelberg India needs to be specially acknowledged and appreciated.
The 28 BMPA member-delegates visited the Wiesloch-Walldorf plant of Heidelberg, UV solutions provider IST Metz, and the cutting machine manufacturer Polar. Wiesloch- Walldorf with a workforce of around 6,500 is the largest press production plant in the world in terms of built up space as well – 860,000 square meters (9,250,000 square feet). All Heidelberg sheetfed offset presses, except the SM range of pre- configured presses that are assembled in its plant in Qingpu China, are assembled at Wiesloch-Walldorf. Parts and components are manufactured at BMPA’s study tour to Heidelberg
Print leaders enjoy sprucing up their knowledge
Heidelberg sites in Amstetten, Brandenburg and at Wiesloch- Walldorf and by several hundred external suppliers.
Wide ranging discussion took place between the Indian print business leaders and senior Heidelberg personnel in the Prinect room of Heidelberg’s Print Media Centre. Felix Mueller of Heidelberg’s Sheetfed Product Marketing explained, “The best machine is not necessarily the largest one nor the one with the most technology – but the one which makes you money for a longer time. Look out for the best workflow. That is the winner.
Heidelberger Druckmaschinen is in a unique position to offer you everything within the supply chain of print management and technology.”
From the company’s SpeedMaster product marketing section Bernhard Seidl made a presentation about the German print market based on PIRA estimates for 2012 that show decline of 16% in forms and business stationery, and increases in advertising related printing of 35% and publishing 25%. Packaging and label printing grew by 24% in that year. Looking to the future, Seidl suggested that intelligent packaging is one of the more promising areas for print innovation and growth.
One of the delegates asked whether there is any difference in the quality of Heidelberg presses manufactured by the company in its plants in Qingpu (Shanghai) in China and Wiesloch-Walldorf (Heidelberg) in Germany. Bernhard Seidl explained that only pre-configured SpeedMaster presses are assembled at
Qingpu with parts and components supplied from Amstetten or Wiesloch and these are fully consistent with the company’s quality control policies. All customised press solutions, he clarified, still come out of the Wiesloch factory. Heidelberg currently operates out of 11 production sites – Amstetten, Brandenburg, Kiel, Langgöns- Oberkleen, Leipzig, Ludwigsburg, Wiesloch in Germany, Qingpu- Shanghai (China), Nové Mesto (Slovakia), St. Gallen (Switzerland) and Sidney (USA).
Robert Crooker, senior VP Digital Print at Heidelberg offered some figures that project the power of industrialised digital printing in coming years. Based on the Pira figures that Crooker shared, print production volumes for digital are forecast to grow at 10.9%, flexo at
+2.6%, sheetfed offset at +0.1%, and web offset -1.7% in Germany by 2020. His presentation indicated that 56% of typical print jobs in Germany already have run lengths of less than 2,500 sheets. Apart from digital printing, Heidelberg’s Anicolor solutions for short run offset printing were also discussed.
Crooker spelt out Heidelberg’s still evolving digital strategy, wherein the service channels of Heidelberg and Gallus in which it is a significant shareholder, will be effectively synergized to help customers grow in these areas. Heidelberg’s collaboration with Fujifilm aimed at bringing unique inkjet press solutions for commercial, packaging and label and foil printing was also discussed.
