The Bavarian Print Media Award in the category “Outstanding Technical Achievements” goes to manroland AG in recognition of the company’s groundbreaking technology for the printing industry.

　　Faster, better, less expensive C in Munich’s Pinakothek der Moderne (Gallery of Modern Art), the Bavarian Print Media Award was presented on 30 October 2008 and the category “Outstanding Technical Achievements” was won by manroland AG. The company’s engineering innovations enable newspapers and magazines to be produced less expensively and with a tighter target group focus. This strengthens the future prospects for print media as well as the Bavarian business location of Augsburg. manroland convinced the high-calibre jury made up of renowned media experts headed by Prof. Dr. Heinrich Oberreuter with two exemplary projects that caused quite a sensation at drupa, the world’s largest printing industry exhibition held in Düsseldorf last May.

　　Groundbreaking technology from Bavaria

　　One is the fully-automated APL (AutomaticPlateLoading) plate changing system for newspaper presses which is the first of its kind to use industrial robots. This was made possible through the excellent cooperation between Bavarian technology pioneer manroland and the KUKA Robot Group, the leader in construction, control and drive of industrial robots. The second project was manroland’s developments for magazine printing, namely the world’s widest web offset presses, the 80-page LITHOMAN, and a 96-page LITHOMAN which is to be installed in a customer’s plant at the end of 2009. To give an idea of the productivity: with a web width of 2.25 metres the 80-page press has an output of 3.2 million four-color A4 pages per hour. And the intended output of the 96-page press is 3.84 million pages per hour.

　　Along with the Bavarian Film Award, the Bavarian Television Award, and the Corine International Book Award, the Bavarian Print Media Award is the fourth prize conferred by the State of Bavaria for the media industry. These awards are made each year during the Munich Media Convention. Since 2000 the Free State of Bavaria, in cooperation with the industry associations Bavarian Newspaper Publishers (VBZV), Bavarian Print & Media (vdmb) and the Bavarian Magazine Publishers (VZB), has recognized outstanding achievements on the part of printing and publishing companies with the Bavarian Print Media Award. The prize for “Outstanding Technical Achievements” was presented by Siegfried Schneider, the newly appointed head of the Bavarian State Chancellery.

（A beaming award winner: Thomas Hauser, Vice President Corporate Marketing & Communications and Press Officer of manroland AG, with the 2008 Bavarian Print Media Award）