With commercial printers still reeling from the impact of the economic meltdown, overcapacity and price erosion, most reports of new investments in the Europeans web offset market tend to focus on high-volume press lines for 64, 72, 80 and even 96 A4 pages on the cylinder. But the proliferation of such presses over the past ten years has in fact contributed to the problem by boosting capacity and driving down prices. On top of this, dwindling ad revenues in the wake of the recession have caused a decline in print runs and pagination, exacerbating the situation. When bidding for contracts, keeping the presses running often takes precedence over profitability. As a result wide, double-circumference presses end up printing jobs for which a modern 16pp press would have been more cost-effective.
Read full article at: KBA C16: an innovative new commercial web press – Printing Industry News from WhatTheyThink.
