Speaking to the world's print media in
Augsburg last week Gerd Finkbeiner, CEO of the newly independent company, presented
a bullish view of print, and of his own company, which has just announced its
preliminary 2007 figures, showing an EBIT (pretax) profit of Euro125m on sales
of just under Euro2bn.

Visitors to drupa will see a perfecting
version of the super large format XXL press, the Roland 900, in sizes, 7, 7B
and 8. Roland will also launch Plus sized presses in its 3B Roland 700 (780x1040mm)
and XXL Roland 900 (126x162mm). adding several centimetres to the sheet size,
allowing valuable extra print.

Still under the subject of big Roland will
present a concept 96pp Lithoman with a huge 2.86 metre web width. Such a press,
if it were ever built, would be able to produce an incredible 3.8 million A4 pages
an hour. While Roland itself, as the world's biggest web press manufacturer, is
confident it has the engineering ability to produce the press, questions loom
over the ability of consumables and ancilliary services to operate at such
widths. Roland has just installed its first 2.25 metre web, in Austria, which is producing 3.2 million pages an
hour.

Other new developments to be shown at
drupa include the inline foiler, so far seen on the Roland 700, for the half
sized Roland 500 press. Newspaper presses will now have APL automated plate
loading, slashing their plate changing times.

MAN Roland is no longer just concerned
with engineering though, and drupa will see the launch of PrintValue, its
comprehensive press support package. The four elements of PrintValue include press
servicing, consumables performance monitoring, internet press performance monitoring
and support, and a range of advice on all aspects of optimising press
productivity.

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