Koenig & Bauer recently opened its new hall and now offers more than 3,000 square meters of floor space for print demonstrations at its Radebeul location, near Dresden. The occasion marked the project’s culmination to upgrade the company’s existing demonstration facility into a global Customer Experience Centre (CEC).
For customers and other interested visitors, the CEC offers around one-third more space, packed with the latest equipment – for press and machine demonstrations, application testing, the development of new technologies, and training purposes. The individual sections focus on the specialized areas of packaging, commercial and label production
The new hall, the Packaging Competence Centre within the CEC, will house three packaging lines comprising three printing presses and four post-press machines once fully set up. Koenig & Bauer will then be able to showcase its one-stop-shop concept for packaging production – with flat-bed and rotary die-cutters, folder-gluers, and fully automated material flows. Meeting areas with direct views of the production lines, workstations to illustrate digital workflow integration and a full range of modern media equipment contribute to an atmosphere conducive to tests, production trials, demonstrations, discussions, and negotiations.
The machinery that is already installed and ready for demonstrations includes a latest-generation medium-format sheetfed offset press. This is a Rapida 106 X with seven printing units, double-coating facilities, an additional printing unit after the first coater and the coil foil system FoilTronic. An Omega Allpro 110 folder-gluer and a CutPRO X 106 rotary die-cutter for converting are also installed. The next step will see the addition of a Rapida 145 and a CutPRO M 144.
Koenig & Bauer started construction of the new building in the second half of 2018. Since the beginning of the year, the project has continued with the completion of the interior and installation of the machines, which were shown in action for the first time as part of the virtual event series “Koenig & Bauer Live” from 16 to 25 June.
In the meantime, 3,500 cubic meters of earth had been dug and 520 cubic meters of concrete poured. Other vital parameters of the building are its 38 pre-cast columns, a roof construction featuring glulam trusses and a span of 35 meters, and 1,300 square meters of cladding. Some 250 LED lights were fitted on mounting tracks with a length of almost 600 meters. Thirty thousand meters of cabling were routed through the facility, and a photovoltaic array was installed on the roof.
Koenig & Bauer is looking forward to the intensive use of the new CEC by customers and other visitors from all over the world over the coming weeks.
