Klaus Kalthoff Rima-System vice president and Bjoern Geller, Rima-System Far East general manager, joined Tom Ralph, Edward Keller national sales manager for the one week journey through New South Wales and Victoria.
According to Kalthoff, “All the Australian printers we have spoken to have been looking for more information on systems for intelligent automation behind presses and bindery lines. During the last two years we have completed some fairly decent jobs in Europe in regards to automating these procedures, for example, the four systems at Hansa Print which is recognised as one of the most modern printing plants in Europe”.
“The latest projects that we have been involved with in Europe and North America have mainly been fully automatic log stacking and compensated stacking solutions, both handled by a central palletising robot. This new ‘Multi Product Robot’ replaces the normal gantry log palletiser and handles both the logs and the stacks. The necessary gripper exchange is fully automatic and is performed in approximately 30 seconds. We have a highly automated robotic palletising and pallet handling solution successfully running since a couple of years here in Australia. In total Rima-System now has experience of more 100 palletising installations worldwide behind presses of all leading suppliers and behind saddle stitchers and perfect binders”.
Kalthoff says that the common message they have been hearing is that most companies have not made any major purchases in post press for the last 12 months, but that interest is high for being able to intelligently automate the processes behind the web press and the major bindery lines.
“We launched a fully automatic log stacker prototype at Ipex, and that is one of the reasons why we are here. There are many log stacking systems here in Australia but many of them are aging. The other reason is to promote our robot technology. This technology means that you need less people manually moving paper around. In future one higher qualified supervisor will run a complete post press system improving productivity and quality of the material handling process. In addition these modern post press systems will interface with the digital workflow of the different companies, allowing the download of orders from a central EDP-System, the recall of stored jobs and the upload of actual production data.”
Rima-System also commits itself to support the Australian printers with the best possible post press knowledge. This means to discuss projects and work out possible solutions directly with the printers. This approach will make sure that all requirements are correctly understood and that the latest Post Press technology is presented to the Australian market. Geller will be in Australia as often as necessary to cope with this commitment – if necessary accompanied by Kalthoff from the Düsseldorf Headquarters.
Ralph will be the interface of Rima-System for all non-package deals. As an independent company not representing any major press and bindery manufacturers, it is considered the ideal contact for all inquiries.
Besides the direct sales Rima-System will also support package deals where press and post press are sold together under one contract. As preferred supplier of several leading web press manufacturers Rima-System gives special channel support to these manufacturers – directly from headquarter to headquarter or locally between the responsible Rima-System Project Centre and the local sales organisation.
Kalthoff and Geller say, “The complexity of today’s presses with their high paper output and the need of intelligent post press solutions makes it necessary that the post press know how and experience of the manufacturers is brought to the printers. Besides reliable and performing machines only this proceeding will allow to design solutions which are optimised in terms of productivity, ergonomics and quality. This is even more important for countries far away from the headquarters and manufacturing sites of the major post press suppliersRima-System will accept this challenging task and work hard in order to provide tailored solutions for the Australian printers.”
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