Philipp Lithographing Adding Large-Format Press

GRAFTON, WI—Philipp Lithographing will be adding a third large-format KBA press to its arsenal. A new 57˝ Rapida 145 six-color press will be delivered in September for installation alongside the printer’s existing 81˝ KBA Rapida 205 and 64˝ Rapida 162A presses on the pressroom floor.

“Having been in business for nearly 100 years, we have built an excellent reputation as a dependable, ultra-high-quality, fast-turnaround firm with superior value-added service,” says Peter Buening, president and CEO of Philipp Litho. “Our customers like to give us challenging jobs because they know we can handle them. To continue to maintain this level of service, we decided to invest in a new large-format KBA press to produce our existing work faster and more efficiently and to open up our capacity to allow for even more throughput.”

Buening and his management team first learned about the new press from an introductory presentation by the KBA sales and technical force before the press was officially unveiled at drupa 2012 in May. Buening was impressed with the machine's extremely fast makeready, minimal makeready sheets, fast running speeds, and the KBA QualiTronic color control, which scans the sheets in the press while running and automatically adjusts density. Furthermore, the overall press size fits nicely within the company’s 55,000-square-foot plant and the maximum sheet size of 41x57˝ will accommodate much of Philipp’s work currently being run on the 64˝ press.

Philipp Litho has built a customer base in the large-format market providing printed sheets for the point-of-purchase (POP) display industry and top sheets and litho labels for the corrugated industry. Buening says the point-of-purchase market is growing and is relatively unaffected by offshore manufacturing. He finds that many corrugated companies have moved into the POP display market because it lends itself to their food and consumer product clients.