IFRA Expo 2010 set to present
state-of- the-art solutions
for the news publishing
The event not to be missed by decision-makers in the news publishing industry, IFRA Expo 2010 to be organised from October 04-06 in Hamburg (Germany) is all set to open its doors presenting a huge showcase of cutting-edge technologies. Despite all the hype surrounding the iPad, Android and other innovations, the core business of publishing houses – print – will play an outstanding role at the show.
Major manufacturers and suppliers will be represented at the event. To date, a total of about 300 exhibitors from more than 30 countries have booked some 10,500 sq m exhibition floor space. Among the major exhibitors in halls A3 and A4 (prepress, printing and finishing) are: ABB, AbitibiBowater, Agfa, Baldwin, BARENSCHEE, Felix Böttcher, EAE, Elettra, Ernst Marks, Experts Team, Ferag, Fujifilm, Goss, Grafikontrol, Holmen Paper, IE Graphic Engineering, Ingenieurbüro Mauser, Kodak, Koenig & Bauer, Krause-Biagosch, manroland, Müller Martini, NELA, Océ, Papierfabrik Palm, ppi Media, Q.I. Press Controls, RIMA-SYSTEM, Scholpp Montage, Schur, Siemens, Sitech Systems, SITMA, Stora Enso, technotrans, Tensor, Tolerans, UPM-Kymmene, VEGRA and WIFAG.
The four focus sessions represent an ideal complement to a visit to this Expo. The up-to-the-minute, print-related topics dealt with are: creative mailroom (Oct 04), latest production trends (Oct 05), green publishing (Oct 05), and excellence in printing (Oct 06). Confirmed speakers include: Marco Castellaneta, CSR delegate, member of the executive board, Ringier AG, Switzerland; George Donaldson, group continuous improvement manager, Newsprinters, UK; Thomas Drensek, operations manager, offset printing plant, Hamburg-Ahrensburg, Axel Springer AG, Germany; Teruo Fujita, president, Shizuoka Shimbun Printing, Japan; Michael O’Brien, production manager, Webprint Concepts Limited, Ireland; Ronnie Poon, vice president – prepress and commercial printing, Singapore Press Holdings, Singapore.
Production-related topics play a major role also at the Media Port in hall A1: The “Innovative Advertising” Session (Oct 06) analyses new forms of advertising in print products and presents practical examples. In addition on October 06, the new members of the International Newspaper Color Quality Club (INCQC) 2010-2012 will be presented and honoured at a ceremony. As announced already by the World Association of Newspapers and News Media (WAN-IFRA), 109 newspaper titles from 43 countries achieved membership in the INCQC and thus most prestigious commendation worldwide for newspaper printing quality. The competition, that has been held every two years since 1994, sets standards for reproduction and colour printing quality.
The WAN-IFRA experts have analysed product trends and give an overview on the website www.ifraexpo.com of the latest offerings scheduled to be unveiled at IFRA Expo.
About automation, Roland Thees, print engineer and WAN-IFRA prepress and quality specialist, said, “Cost pressure and rationalisation, combined with progressive IT solutions, permit the installation of an integrated prepress workflow that entails only minor manual intervention. The focus here is especially on online ad delivery, automated image optimisation and pre-flight checking of the completed pages. Softproofing on a monitor directly at the press, ideally of the RIPped, enables low-cost final checking.” Concerning ink saving, he added, “Many systems suppliers of software products for editorial, image processing, prepress and RIPs or imaging systems respectively, have in their portfolio an application that allows the use of own ink savers or other manufacturer’s software.”
“Environment-friendly production begins with environmentally aware management. Examples of sustainable measures at printing operations are optimised ink utilisation and therefore minimum ink waste, plate recycling, paper recycling, use of environment-friendly materials, energy control systems for optimised power and heating consumption, the use of renewable energy, cutting emissions (e.g. by low-emission cleaning agents), environment-friendly transport solutions and optimised logistics. Therefore concrete ‘green’ solutions are what to ask for at IFRA Expo,” commented Beatrix Beckmann, WAN-IFRA materials expert, talking about ecology and ‘green’ printing.
“The trend towards paper reels that are larger (wider – for triple-wide presses – and of a larger diameter) reduces the required reel transport capacity. The use of a triple-wide press means that it is necessary to store two additional reel categories (5/6 and 6/6-wide reels) compared to double-width reels and consequently design the warehouse accordingly. The weight of the wider or thicker reels respectively (up to three tonnes) means that manual transport must be discontinued. All these aspects have to be taken into account when planning a printing operation. Besides for transport in the warehouse and day store, reel unwrapping and preparing can also be automated. These steps in the work process have been greatly simplified by the development of straight splicing and multi-function splicing tape that have been used successfully worldwide for some years,” opined Moritz Schwarz, senior consultant, WAN-IFRA, describing automatic reel management.
