Koenig & Bauer showcases Rapida 76

Koenig & Bauer has demonstrated the Rapida 76's flexibility for commercial, label and packaging printing at an open house in Radebeul, Germany, where the B2 press showed live job changes between complex commercial, label and folding carton jobs while processing board up to 1.0 mm thick at 18,000 sheets per hour.

The press utilizes automation components from the Rapida 106 'Royal Class', including simultaneous makeready processes and the sidelay-free infeed system DriveTronic SIS, which reduce job changeover times by up to 30 percent and drastically reduce waste.

'This open house has made one thing absolutely clear to me: the time for compromises in the B2 format is over,' stated Markus Weiß, CEO of Koenig & Bauer Paper & Packaging Sheetfed Systems. 'We have consistently transferred the proven high-end technology of our Rapida 106 Royal Class to this format. The result is a machine that resolves the either-or in this segment.'

Nearly 100 printing professionals from across Europe attended the event, where users confirmed the press's performance in practice. Matthias Herrmann, managing director at Schmidt & Buchta, emphasized the machine's reliability in a high-performance environment with an average of 19 commercial job changes per day, while Oscar Pepermans, owner of Rutgers Printing & Packaging Solutions in the Netherlands, highlighted that the investment provides a significant competitive advantage.

The press features inline quality control systems including QualiTronic ColorControl and PDFCheck, which ensure color accuracy from the first sheet and reduce makeready time by up to 30 percent per job. High-end double coating units and cold foil packages enable premium finishing in a single pass.