Recognition for Sustained Resource Conservation at MAN Roland

Sustained resource conservation is a key success strategy for MAN Roland. This characterises the production facilities for the different presses of the company’s range, as well as the resource-conserving operation of these products in printing plants all over the world.

Certified quality

MAN Roland sheetfed and web offset presses are built at four production facilities in Germany: Augsburg, Plauen, Offenbach and Mainhausen. All together and each individually meet the highest demands concerning environmental issues and social responsibility towards the employees. Testimony to this are the DIN EN ISO 9001:2000 quality management systems certified by independent experts and the awards the company has received.

Environment-compatible press manufacturing

The environment management systems used in Augsburg and Plauen comply with international industrial standards and have DIN EN ISO 14001:2005 certification. Teams of specialists in the fields of environment, quality assurance and industrial safety have implemented the standard’s guidelines, optimised environmentally relevant production processes, analysed all environmental aspects of the company, and identified potential for improvements.

“Highlight Award” for environmental commitment

The Offenbach and Mainhausen facilities can be proud of their successful environment management efforts. In 2007 they received the Glanzlicht-Auszeichnung from the Ministry of the Environment in the German state of Hesse, and some figures show why: since 2001, with rising sales and therefore higher productivity, consumption of energy has been reduced by 30 percent (from 60,000 to 47,300 MWh). Similarly, consumption of natural gas has been reduced by 38% and water by 32%. In recent years several million euros have been invested in energy-saving projects and now the measures are paying off in the heating centre and the compressor station of the main factory. Better building insulation and optimised energy supply systems are making energy usage in Augsburg more efficient, and an energy management system for all areas is under development. In the near future Plauen will have low-energy light sources and be using solar technology to reduce power consumption.

Environmental awareness for the entire life cycle

What applies for the production facilities applies equally to MAN Roland’s products – sheetfed and web offset presses. The environment and printing are in harmony; here are some examples: conserving resources by using less energy and materials remains a major challenge that MAN Roland is responding to with new technical solutions. Other current topics are less or even no alcohol in damping solutions, reduced solvent emissions, and more effective noise protection measures. What is decisive however is LifeCycleManagement which encompasses environmental awareness for the entire life cycle of a printing system.

Automation saves materials

MAN Roland sheetfed and web presses feature a high degree of automation which drastically reduces makeready times and thus saves a great deal of materials. QuickStart for example reduces start-up waste with newspaper presses from several hundred copies to less than one hundred. Optimised presetting using printnet, the integrated production management system, also helps to produce saleable copies within a short space of time.

XXL presses are more cost-efficient

Another goal is to reduce energy consumption per printed page and this can be accomplished by using particularly large press formats. Modern XXL technologies combined with water cooling systems in newspaper printing can cut energy costs by one-third. New drive concepts and automatic printing width control have the same purpose, avoiding energy waste through friction and the associated heat build-up. Larger-format commercial web presses have the same effect. When production is placed on 64-page presses instead of 16-page presses, power consumption can be reduced by around one-third. Besides that, the consumption of compressed air and gas per printed page is lower.

Dryer with practically zero gas consumption

In discussions concerning the pressroom environment, energy recycling is a very important aspect. Already today, utilising heat from dryers or cooling systems is possible and will be practised more and more in the future. New dryer technologies for commercial web offset presses reduce power consumption by as much as 97 percent. The energy generated by the drying of solvents in printing inks is recovered and used as energy for after-burning systems. In many cases these RTO systems (RTO = Regenerative Thermal Oxidation) need practically no additional energy because they are self-sufficient and with certain production conditions only need the energy provided by solvent drying.