DRUPA 08: Lots of New Presses In Store

News about drupa comes from many sources, two principal conduits being trade shows last month—Graph Expo in Chicago and IGAS in Tokyo. Press manufacturers hinted stateside and displayed in Japan offerings that will be shown to the wider public when nearly 400,000 visitors meet 1,800 exhibitors in 19 halls, for a feast of new printing technologies. Program your Blackberry for May 29-June 11, 2008.

Akiyama International (AIC), which came under ownership of Shanghai's Electric Group five years ago, chose IGAS earlier this month for the official global launch of updated 40´´ presses that will form the core of its drupa 2008 offerings.

Akiyama president Xiong Qing Hu told some 250 guests the firm is financially solid (its parent has $13 billion annual revenues; it raised $580 million to fund global expansion; 60% of sales are export) as AIC expands R&D and manufacturing, and aggressively moves to become a global competitor. Akiyama launched its Supertech, a speedier (16,500 sph) upgraded successor to the Bestech platform; presented its 16,000-sph eXtreme540CL press, now custom configurable with coaters, inter-station curing and improved ACC ink presets and improved feeders; and launched the 15,000-sph Mega Jprint, the latest version of its JP440 single-gripper stacked press, shown in Tokyo as a 5-color Jprint 5p540DC+RF (the 5-color runs at 14,000 sph) with new dual-sided chamber coaters and roll infeed.

Komori showed an offset-press mounted with a cold foiler at IGAS, and a 44´´ Lithrone as well as the 24×29´´ LSX seen in Chicago. Heidelberg displayed a 10-color Anicolor-based long perfector press, which is in the 13.78×19.68´´ Speedmaster 52 format. This means the company has met the challenge of developing suitable inks for Anicolor fifth colors and for perfector performance, because these inks must be specially formulated to work in the chilled short ink train of the press. The company is expected to show perfector versions of the XL105 and has stated it will show the 56´´ and 64´´ versions of the XL press next spring in Dusseldorf. At Graph Expo, Heidelberg CEO Jim Dunne stated that the company has sold out its 2008 production of the wide presses, and that two of them will arrive in the U.S. next year, likely going to a commercial and a packaging operation.

Shinohara showed the 109, a new platform, 18,000-sph 43´´ wide press. And Mitsubishi debuted a new sheetfed platform, the Diamond V3000—its first totally new model of straight sheetfed presses in seven years. While retaining the basic performance standards of earlier versions, the newest model realizes improvements in productivity and operability in 80 areas, and incorporates new styling. It is a full-sized press for sheet sizes up to 41.´´