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October 2009

KBA Customer Expertise Celebrated

Carefully considered investment in equipment, recruitment and training has been rewarded with the industry’s coveted Print Week Company Of The Year Award 2009 for KBA house Buxton Press. 
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(L-R) Darryl Danielli, Print Week Editor, Buxton Press Executive Director George Briddonand Operations Director Kirk Galloway with the host of the awards BBC presenter Jeremy Vine (1) 
The achievement is all the more remarkable since the Derbyshire-based sheetfed magazine specialist faced the bleak prospect of closure as recently as 2004. But a tightly controlled £12m investment programme helped redefine its business model with quality, efficiency and service at its core, to achieve commendations at the same awards in 2005 and 2006 and reaching the final shortlist again last year.With its success built on a bank of RAPIDA B1 presses, Buxton Press can be considered a working celebration of the KBA legend – driven by innovation, defined by excellenc. This approach has lead to considerable recent environmental accolades including Environmental Company of the Year, Environmental Printer of the Year, Best Environmental Printer and Environmental Performance of the Year. 
At the same event Leicester Karat 74 user, Taylor Bloxham, claimed the title of Customer Magazine Printer of the Year. Judges particularly noted the quality of Calibre, a bi-annual magazine for premium watch retailer Watches of Switzerland. 
Another Karat 74 user Screaming Colour took home title of Digital Printer of the Year forall four of the London-based digital printer’s work samples, which demonstrated a 'consistently high standard, with great imagery and fantastic in-house finishing that really accentuates the quality of the brochures'. 
Also taking centre stage was Augustus Martin, with two RAPIDA 162s, two 105s and a 205. After twice finishing as runner-up, it went one better this year to top the Point-of-Purchase Printer category with a motorised Ferris wheel display created for O2's ‘Pay & Go' campaign on behalf of Williams Lea… indeed, such was the impact that the judges in the innovative print category tried to nominate it for their top spot, too. The Bromley-By-Bow operation was also commended in the Poster Printer of the Year group while London-based SMP Group, which has a RAPIDA 162 and a 105, was a finalist. 
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(L-R) KBA UK Managing Director Christian Knapp, John Carter Stralfors UK group managing director and BBC presenter Jeremy Vine (2) 
KBA (UK) Ltd Managing Director Christian Knapp presented the KBA sponsored Environmental Company of the Year award to Stralfors. Judges chose the Redruth company for its improvement programmes that ‘set some real environmental targets and gathered data to show some genuine improvements in performance over the past year’. 
Also commended in the Environmental Company category was Cambrian Printers which last year became the first mainland UK operation to install the new RAPIDA 106 in a long perfecting 10 unit configuration – the first press in mainland UK to feature KBA’s record-breaking DriveTronic Simultaneous Platechanging System (SPC). The latest recognition of the Aberystwyth family-owned company’s dedication to environmentally responsible printing follows accolades at the BPIF Excellence Awards and People In Print Awards. It claimed the coveted Environment (>100 employees) and Corporate Social Responsibility titles at the former and the Environmental Award at the latter. 
Other KBA customers receiving recognition were SME of the Year finalist and 10-colour RAPIDA 105 owner The Blue Printing Company of Harlow and Garnett Dickinson Print, Rotherham, which operates a Karat 74 and was shortlisted in the Customer Service Team of the Year category. 
Mr Knapp says: “To see so many KBA customers achieving such success in these prestigious awards underlines the quality of print that is a standard feature of our highly technical and innovative presses. Continually striving to improve and enhance the efficiency of production is central to our philosophy and one that has seen the creation of exciting developments such as Flying JobChange which enables plates changes to take place while the press is still in full production, effectively resulting in zero makeready times.” 
 
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