RADEBEUL, Germany—Koenig & Bauer recently opened its new hall and now offers more than 30,000 square feet of floor space for print demonstrations at its Radebeul location, near Dresden. The occasion marked the culmination of a project to upgrade the company’s existing demonstration facility into a global customer experience center (CEC). For customers and other interested visitors, the CEC offers around one-third more space—packed with the very latest equipment—for press and machine demonstrations, application testing, the development of new technologies and for training purposes. The individual sections focus on the specialized areas of packaging, commercial and label production
The new hall, the Packaging Competence Centre within the CEC, will house three packaging lines comprising three printing presses and four post-press machines once fully set up. Koenig & Bauer will then be able to showcase its one-stop-shop concept for packaging production—with flat-bed and rotary die cutters, folder-gluers and fully automated material flows. Meeting areas with direct views of the production lines, workstations to illustrate digital workflow integration and a full range of modern media equipment contribute to an atmosphere conducive to tests, production trials, demonstrations, discussions and negotiations.
The machinery that is already installed and ready for demonstrations includes a latest-generation medium-format sheetfed offset press, this being a Rapida 106 X with seven printing units, double-coating facilities, an additional printing unit after the first coater and the coil foil system FoilTronic, as well as an Omega Allpro 110 folder-gluer and a CutPRO X 106 rotary die-cutter. The next step will see the addition of a Rapida 145 and a CutPRO M 144.
Koenig & Bauer started construction of the new building in the second half of 2018. Since the beginning of the year, the project has continued with the completion of the interior and installation of the machines, which were shown in action for the first time as part of the virtual event series “Koenig & Bauer Live” June 16-25. In the meantime, 123,601 cubic feet of earth had been dug and 18,363 cubic feet of concrete had been poured. Other key parameters of the building are its 38 pre-cast columns, a roof construction featuring glulam trusses and a span of 114 feet and 13,993 square feet of cladding. Some 250 LED lights were fitted on mounting tracks with a length of almost 1,968 feet, 98,425 feet of cabling were routed through the facility, and a photovoltaic array was installed on the roof.
Koenig & Bauer is looking forward to intensive use of the new CEC by customers and other visitors from all over the world over the coming weeks.