Retired KBA president Bolza-Schuenemann visits U.S. printers

Jul 1, 2008 1:49 PM

This May, Dr. Hans Bolza-Schuenemann, retired company president of

Koenig & Bauer AG (Wurzburg, Germany; Williston, VT), visited major press installations and significant customers of KBA North America. Stops included visits to both sheetfed and web offset printers in New York, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Missouri.

In Niles, IL, Bolza-Schuenemann visited the headquarters of The Garvey Group, a leading large-format printer with a bevy of large-format presses from KBA, including a Rapida 205 81-inch press.

“It was an honor and a thrill to welcome Dr. Bolza-Schuenemann to our facility,” says Ed Garvey, president of The Garvey Group. “As longtime KBA press operators, we were anxious to show him our top-notch facility and the amazing type of work we produce on his KBA presses.”

“It was clear that, at his core, he is an engineer,” Garvey notes. “He discussed some of the proprietary elements available on KBA presses and was interested in discovering how we utilized these advances.”

John Young III, president of Burd & Fletcher Co. (Independence, MO), an innovative leader in commercial printing of dairy and frozen food packaging, equally enjoyed Bolza-Schuenemann’s two-and-a-half-hour visit to Burd & Fletcher’s unique underground facility. “I found him to be very passionate about his KBA customers,” says Young. “And he is very proud of his company and his family. We talked about how both of us are involved in family-run businesses; my brother Peter and I are fifth-generation owners of our company. During the tour of our good-sized facility, he was as spry as a teenager. And at 82 years of age, he has seen a lot of change in those years, in both the printing industry and the world in general.”

Young remembers meeting Bolza-Schünemann for the first time at the 2001 Graph Expo in Chicago, one of Bolza-Schuenemann’s 200 trips to the United States. “His English is impeccable,” says Young, “and he’s a wonderful human being. He really is an inspiration to all of us.”

Bolza-Schuenemann also made stops at a number of major U.S. newspaper plants that are operating KBA Commander web offset presses. In New York City, he visited New York’s Daily News, which recently purchased a 15-tower, 6-by-2 Commander CT web press configured as three sections. The 90,000-copy-an-hour machines, slated to go into production next year in an expanded facility at the Daily News’ Jersey City, NJ, production site, will give the paper full color on every page, giving the tabloid a key competitive advantage in the New York marketplace. By the end of 2009, the Daily News will become the first major market daily newspaper in the United States to be produced in 100 percent color on new press equipment manufactured by KBA. The new Commander CT presses will help the Daily News reinforce its presence as the country’s leading tabloid and enable its millions of readers to enjoy the city’s first full-color newspaper.

KBA’s Commander presses were also on view at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which operates a double-width Commander, and the Kansas City Star, which operates two Commander press lines with a total of 36 four-high towers, 216 printing couples, 40 reelstands, and four folders.

In addition to visiting key printing sites, Bolza-Schuenemann was able to take time to enjoy the Metropolitan Opera in New York City and the Chicago Symphony.

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