The view from the Summit - Print 21 magazine feature

Having more than 1,000 printers come to visit over a five-day period is a challenge even for the legendary logistical skills of the Germans. One year out from drupa, manroland rose to the challenge by hosting an open house in Offenbach last month, inviting customers from all corners to the globe to attend its Sheetfed Summit. Simon Enticknap was one of the few journalists to make the trip too.

There’s no doubt that this week-long event was a big deal for manroland. At Ipex last year, the company opted to go for a stand without any live equipment, and whilst it claimed the decision worked in its favour, there comes a time when serious printers need to see machines running.

No amount of slick video presentations can quite match the first-hand experience of seeing several tonnes of heavy metal pumping out the sheets with silky speed.

Slotting in between Ipex and drupa next year, this inaugural Sheetfed Summit gave customers, and a few journalists, a brief, intense exposure to the latest technological developments from the offset giant.

Visitors came from all parts of the globe, divided up into geographical regions over several days, giving the event a real United Nations of manroland feel. Staff members seemed a little giddy with the excitement of it all, or maybe it was just nerves. Still, they coped with the stress of managing the invasion of a small army of international visitors with admirable aplomb.

Perhaps because it was pre-drupa, there were no major technical developments unveiled at the Summit, certainly no new press models although there were some interesting configurations. What was on show over the two days of presentations and live demos I saw was a powerful reminder that we live in a golden age of offset printing, at least from a technological perspective.

Pictured: Attendee inspecting the inkjet printheads on the Océ JetStream 2200 digital press.

While digital technology – both print and online - continues to gnaw at the edges of sheetfed print’s traditional markets, the presses themselves (even the smallest models) now represent a level of engineering sophistication and refinement that would have been unheard of a decade or two ago.

You expect to get a great view from the Summit and certainly it’s hard to believe how this one could get any better.

Understanding the nuts and bolts

In addition to the press demos, the Summit also included a variety of break-out sessions covering topics such as manroland’s printservices for optimising press utilisation, and web-to-print solutions for sheetfed operations.

These sessions highlighted the extent to which manroland’s activity these days is as much about providing business consultancy and ancillary services as it is about making presses. This was best exemplified by a quote from manroland CEO, Gerd Finkbeiner, who apparently announced in a managers’ meeting that “Our core product is performance”.

Maybe, but there’s no doubt that ‘heavy metal’ still lies at the heart of it all. No trip to Offenbach would be complete without a factory tour and the spectacle of the foundry with its buckets of glowing molten metal and cascades of sparks.

The tour is a vivid demonstration of manroland’s engineering heritage; the rows of milling machines, stacks of finely-honed machine parts and rabbit warren of production lines are a homage to the European tradition of industrialised metal-working and manufacturing. This is the nuts and bolts of the company, literally. Even the air smells of metal.

At first glance the factory looks like a jumbled pile of metal parts but closer inspection reveals just how tightly the whole process is organised. Our guide pointed out that the plant doesn’t make off-the-shelf parts; everything is made with specific presses in mind (many of which seemed to be heading for China).

The quality standards are intense. Here, tolerances are measured in microns, and the line between pass and fail is thinner than a spider’s thread. It’s that balance between precision and sheer bulk which is so impressive; the huge impression cylinders of a 900 press weigh in a 4.5 tonnes alone and yet are manufactured with ultra-finesse and accuracy.

Markus Rall, executive board member for sheetfed printing, introduced the Summit by reminding attendees of some important statistics, such as the 7,000 billion book pages printed each year, or the 126 billion kilos of packaging produced each year, much of it still printed on sheetfed offset presses.

Sure, this market is changing – as demonstrated by the fact that Océ also took part in the Summit demonstrating its digital inkjet machines – but for many of the Summiteers at this event, print will always be associated with the sight and sound of a precision-made German machine firing on all cylinders.

Rall also reminded the gathering that this year marks 100 years since the introduction of the first press to be called a “Roland”, an offset sheetfed rotary press that won a gold medal at the 1911 Turin Fair. A century later, the descendants of that press look to be in pretty good shape indeed.