A “perfect Match”

Oliver Baar, the Director of Product Marketing at Koenig & Bauer Digital & Webfed, and Julia Müller, the Director of Decor Paper at Koehler Paper, are standing between monitors and moving paper webs while closely following the printing process. It’s a rush to see how well Koehler Paper’s premium print base paper and Koenig & Bauer’s ­RotaJET seamlessly work together to deliver first-class printed results. “We installed our first printing press for decor uses in 2015, and have had nothing but good experiences with Koehler since,” Baar recounts. The fact that this remains true to this very day can be traced back to the extraordinary – and incredibly consistent – quality of the print base paper made in the German city of Kehl, as well as the equally exceptional quality of these printing presses. It’s the result of a focus on users and solutions: “Customers can count on the consistently high quality of our print base paper and use it either for rotogravure printing or digital printing with enormous flexibility – a vital plus for converters,” Müller explains.

Julia Müller takes a freshly printed sample in her hand. Marble. Stoically colorful but luxurious, with finely veined patterns. “Decor paper is specialty paper used to create quality finishes on wooden materials, and it’s hard to think what modern interior design would look like without it,” she explains. The single-color paper products are either impregnated directly or printed on with a variety of ­designs that look like real wood or stone or can be used to reproduce fancy abstract patterns. The results are then used on furniture, floors, countertops, paneling, window sills, façades, and much more.

Base paper for decor printing needs to be an all-rounder: It must have good printability, absorbency, impregnability, dimensional stability, and color accuracy. And consistent quality, as decor materials are often laid across large areas and remain in use for many years. In other words, every pattern needs to be reproduced accurately. “Our RotaJET is a high-volume digital printing press known for its incredible precision. That means that consistent paper quality within a reel, from reel to reel, and from batch to batch is essential for high-quality, efficient production,” Baar says. 

The expert is thrilled with the possibilities of digital printing: “Our users can offer decor materials that can’t be made with rotogravure printing.” This makes striking details and non-repetitive color gradients possible, for instance. Not to mention that processes are more efficient: Shorter setup times and excellent reproducibility mean significantly higher printing volumes. But digital printing also allows for smaller volumes. This means that existing decor production is more flexible and new designs can be launched more quickly. 

Digital printing also has advantages when it comes to ­resources: Since it only prints the quantities that are actually needed, there is little spoilage, trimming waste, and color variance. In addition, no gravure cylinders need to be etched like for the intaglio process, eliminating the need for chemical processes. Finally, it only uses water-based inks.

The RotaJET is a high-volume digital printing press for an extremely wide variety of appl­i­cations. It prints up to 18,225 m2/h in decor ­applications.