Newspaper & Mailroom
KBA users tops again in quality competition
Monday 31. March 2008 - International Newspaper Color Quality Club 2008-2010
This year the benchmarking competition for membership of the coveted International Newspaper Color Quality Club 2008-2010 attracted a record198 applications. The number of countries participating was also higher than ever before. Fifty submissions, roughly one-quarter of the total, were approved by an international jury of experts to receive this coveted accolade for quality excellence in colour newspaper printing sponsored by Ifra, the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) and the PANPA (Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers Association).
Three Cortina users among the 50 best
The winners included three KBA Cortina users: CIE Lausanne (24 heures), Freiburger Druck (Badische Zeitung) and Rheinpfalz Verlag und Druckerei (Die Rheinpfalz). The high success rate of 75% at the first attempt is indicative of the enormous quality potential this ultra-compact waterless press brings to newspaper production.
38% of top places go to KBA customers
19 of the top 50 places, or 38% of all successful submissions, went to European, Middle East and Asian newspaper publishers operating presses from KBA. The National-Zeitung und Basler Nachrichten in Basel, Switzerland, won a place for the fourth time in succession with a contract title, Coopzeitung. Polish printer Agora Poligrafia in Tychy was one of the first time lucky with Metro, and gained a place for the fourth time in succession with Gazeta Wyborcza. The same title also won Agora’s Warsaw operation membership for the third time, while its Pila plant became a new member with both Gazeta Wyborcza and Metro.
Awarded membership for the third year running were Zurich-based Tamedia’s Tages-Anzeiger, Singapore Press Holdings’ The Straits Times and The Business Times, and a regional German title, the Heilbronner Stimme. Among the top 50 for the second time were Singapore Press Holdings’ Berita Harian and Lianhe ZaoBao, FAZ-Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, and a Dutch title, De Stentor, which is printed by Wegener Nieuwsdruk Gelderland in Apeldoorn.
Prestigious German daily the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and an Israeli title, Yedioth Ahronoth, printed by Yedioth Communication Press in Park Bar-Lev, were among the first-time members of this exclusive international club.
Congratulations to all the winners on this outstanding achievement.