Offset Printing

Good times or bad – there’s life in print yet!

KBA Report No. 34 provides proof from the international print media industry that every crisis also represents an opportunity

Tuesday 03. March 2009 - KBA Report No. 34 out now

Print media providers and their suppliers have not escaped unscathed from the recent financial turmoil. But the pervading gloom is misplaced: there is life in print yet. This is the conclusion KBA marketing director Klaus Schmidt reaches in the latest issue of the group’s corporate magazine, KBA Report: “Every crisis represents an opportunity, and this one is no different. While others hold back, now may be the time to refocus activities and, perhaps, make strategic investments in preparation for future growth.” His claim is supported by a string of articles on companies who are investing heavily in future growth, and the successful business models applied in different branches of the industry in over twenty countries.

In his editorial KBA president and CEO Albrecht Bolza-Schünemann also reviews the current economic situation, looking back on both the good times and the bad. He points out that the scenario of the past six months has no historic precedent within the past fifty years: “Fluctuations in demand have been an inherent feature of the press engineering business cycle for many decades now, but in all my 30 years in the press engineering industry I have never experienced such a precipitate and universal collapse in demand. Not even the economic crisis of 1931 can be considered comparable, because eighty years ago globalisation was nowhere near as advanced as it is today.”

The broad range of topics handled in the current issue of KBA Report encompasses inline quality management with QualiTronic Professional at a Dutch commercial printer, the debut of DensiTronic PDF at a German packaging printer, the first variable-format 72pp web press in France, new newspaper press installations in Germany, Italy, India, Azerbaijan, Turkey and Trinidad, blanket characteristics, semi-commercial print production and optimising pre-press data.
The English edition contains an eight-page supplement on faster quality correction.