Managing director Daniel Fitzner and printer Simon Wildfeuer (left) discuss the next print job at the console of the Rapida 106 (1

It is almost exactly one year since a Rapida 106 started production for Oskar Görner in Chemnitz. The five-colour press with inline coater and extended delivery is the largest sheetfed offset press in use at the company, and easily surpasses the machinery used at all the other commercial printers in the city in terms of sheet format.

For Oskar Görner, a family business with 25 employees and a history extending back more than 125 years, the Rapida 106 is, first and foremost, the key to significantly increasing printing capacity. The boost in performance can primarily be attributed to high production speeds and fast makeready. While two shifts used to be fully occupied with print production, a quarter of that time has now been freed up for additional print jobs and/or special finishing tasks. This has allowed the level of in-house value creation to be increased accordingly. Inline finishing with matt, gloss or scented coatings has meantime become a daily routine, with the coater also being used for both die-cutting and perforating. The conversion work required for this is completed in a matter of minutes.

The low height of the ceiling must be kept in mind when working in an historic production hall: Simon Wildfeuer loads new plates into the changers on the printing units (2

More products per sheet

When the time for a new investment came, managing director Daniel Fitzner took a close look at the products available from a range of manufacturers. The relative proximity to the manufacturing plant was one factor that made a sheetfed offset press from Radebeul particularly appealing. Furthermore, the Rapida 106 offered a number of impressive technical features. These included the automatic washing of the coating unit, fast and simple coating forme changes, inline colour control, fully automatic plate changing and the larger format of 750 × 1,060 mm.

The extra three to five centimetres it offers over the predecessor press are especially valuable for the company. For some calendar formats, the number of pages available from a sheet can be doubled from six to 12. When producing newspaper inserts and some packaging jobs, too, each sheet can now accommodate two, or even four, more products.

This all brings immense benefits for Oskar Görner. As a full-range commercial printing company, it handles a broad range of commercial products such as newspaper inserts, leaflets and catalogues. Light packaging is another important area. Run lengths fluctuate from just 300 and up to 100,000 sheets. Leaflets incorporating a perforated postcard have already been produced in runs of 300,000 to 400,000 copies. The company’s customers come from all over Germany and its neighbouring countries.