Day 10 - 07 June 2008

70 Different Motifs Printed Live

Beautiful pictures, printed on high-quality paper, enhanced with the greatest coatings – this is where they feel at home. The 27 printing instructors from the manroland Print Technology Center are doing magic to get this certain something into our printed products. The preparations for those prints that customers, visitors and journalists are so fond of started long before the show. It was not later than January that all six sheetfed presses manroland uses for live printing at drupa, were installed and set up in Offenbach. Then Gerhard Augsberg, Vice President of the manroland Print Technology Center, and his team tested the paper, coating and color quality. “We have chosen demanding motifs to thus demonstrate our reliable and groundbreaking quality,” underlines Augsberg.

Since the start of the show other tasks are in the focus: his printing instructors are presenting, explaining, and demonstrating the presses. Usually there are two printers and system consultants on each press. The amount of material used is impressive: “We’ve put up a major printing company here,” says Augsberg. Every day a lot of process-compliant system components are entering and leaving the exhibition hall. Augsberg is expecting 153 tons of paper to be printed and 2,600 printing plates to be used by the end of the show. During the entire show manroland is printing 70 different motifs altogether. On the six-color ROLAND 700 HiPrint for example the motifs change within a day from a packaging form to a Bacardi poster and then to a motorbike picture. Each job is challenging due to different printing demands.

	The reason that there are so many different pictures is that manroland intends to address itself both to printers who wish to check quality as well as to show visitors who just like to take beautiful posters home with them. The visitors’ favorite motif is the world map. Enlarge view

manroland Booth Packed with Visitors

	It is the totality that makes manroland so successful. For the printing press manufacturer drupa is a giant puzzle whose parts fit into each other perfectly: its mechanics, salespeople, printers, marketing and not least the moderators who present all presses professionally and motivatedly. The audience’s huge interest shows that the new performance is accepted very well. Enlarge view

Our Friendly Counter Ladies

Always smiling, always friendly – this is how everybody knows our ladies on the drupa counters. They are the first manroland contact for show visitors, customers and journalists. They are in control of everything. No matter if German, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese or Russian: the ladies are always prepared to listen. Most of all, though, they have a lot of staying power. It never gets boring here. There is often a need for improvisation to keep every customer happy, especially when there are tricky questions. Meanwhile the counter ladies know the manroland booth like the back of their hands. Enlarge view

Successful Visit to drupa Up Close and Personal
1000 members of manroland staff at the trade fair in Dusseldorf

Recently, a literal caravan of manroland employees traveled to Dusseldorf in a cheerful mood and full of high expectations. Their efforts were rewarded with a wealth of new impressions. A daytrip to the trade fair highlight drupa is rather strenuous following a full week at work. In the early hours of Saturday morning on June 7th, around 1000 somewhat sleepy-eyed employees of manroland, the world's second largest printing systems manufacturer, boarded the special trains and buses from the production sites of Augsburg and Plauen as well as of Offenbach and Mainhausen. Despite the early hour, their spirits were high, their mood excellent, and they were filled with pleasant expectation, judging by the lively buzz of their voices. Enlarge view (Augsburg group) Enlarge view (Offenbach group)

From this point on and throughout the several-hour trip, no one would think of sleeping. Everyone was looking forward to the exhibition, a global highlight of the print industry, which is held every four years and provides the best platform for illustrating each employee's own contribution to the corporate success. Many members of staff wanted to find this out for themselves - by talking to the around 650 colleagues manning the fair booth, by receiving a lasting first-hand impression of the new brand appearance and the successful booth concept, and, of course, by attending the exciting live presentations of the presses. Enlarge view

	However, the drupa experience had much more to offer. The international flair, the lively atmosphere, the faces from all corners of the globe, coupled with the wealth of scents ranging from machine oil to the most expensive perfumes to spicy sausages, turned the trip into a memorable and successful event for everyone. Enlarge view