Chicago-based R.R. Donnelley & Sons Co., the largest commercial printing company in world, is teaming up with German printing press manufacturer Koenig & Bauer AG (KBA) to develop, manufacture and sell digital inkjet printing solutions targeting the packaging, securities, commercial and newspaper segments.
According to a release, RR Donnelley will license its Apollo and other digital imaging technologies to KBA which will incorporate them into its press offerings. KBA’s new digital press will be introduced in May 2012 at the Drupa international print show in Dusseldorf, Germany.
“KBA has spent the last 18 months assessing both current and future digital printing technologies from around the world,” noted Helge Hansen, CEO of KBA in the release. “In our analysis, it was clear that RR Donnelley was uniquely positioned to partner with us from a digital print technology, experience, and scale perspective. It’s more than a sales and service agreement for existing technology. We look forward to jointly reinvigorating this industry with new digital imaging platforms.”
“We look forward to having the combined R&D resources of nearly 1,000 engineers and imaging scientists bring forward the next generation of digital imaging technologies”, said Thomas J. Quinlan III, RR Donnelley’s president and CEO.
In May of 2008, the day before the doors opened to Drupa 2008, RR Donnelley first announced it had developed its proprietary Integrated Printing System (IPS) 3, a 1,200 dpi four colour inkjet web press—a 30-inch wide roll-fed press running at 400 feet per minute for four-colour and 800 fpm for two-colour output. (The next day HP began demonstrating its T300 Color Inkjet Web Press, also running 400 fpm and 30 inches wide at 1,200 dpi on the show floor at Drupa.)
RR Donnelley announced its inkjet project code-named Apollo in May of 2009. Another internally-developed and proprietary technology, Apollo was to be deployed on presses within Donnelley’s production platform, retrofitting conventional presses with high-speed inkjet capability.
