Heidelberg open house to host two UK firsts

Two presses will be on public show for the first time in the UK at Heidelberg’s Press4Value open house next month.

The Speedmaster CX 75 and Speedmaster CS 92 LED-UV will both be run alongside a full range of pre-press systems, digital presses, finishing, workflow and consumables products at the event, which will take place at the firm's national showroom in Brentford on 21-22 February.

The CX 75 is a 15,000sph press that was first announced last year. At 2.8x2.1m, it is Heidelberg’s narrowest B2 press and is intended as a more compact and lower-cost alternative to the Speedmaster XL 75.

It has a fully-automated wash programme and, connected with Prinect, makereadies are said to be processed in under five minutes.

The CS 92 is a 15,000sph SRA1 press that was originally introduced for the Chinese market in 2015.

Heidelberg UK sales director Jim Todd said: “The XL 75 is a well-known beast but we wanted to strengthen our offering for the less industrial printer who’s not necessarily a three-shift operator looking to run millions and millions of impressions. For when the firepower of the XL 75 is too great, the CX 75 has filled that gap for us.

“And there’s a place in the market for the CS 92 – there are often B2 printers that want to go bigger but don’t need to go to the full B1 sheet, so this gives them the opportunity for an alternative to a B2 press with a slightly bigger SRA1 sheet size.”

He added: “And LED-UV is a hot topic. There’s a lot of confusion in the market about LE-UV and LED-UV – which one’s which and which is the best. Some manufacturers are saying LED is the future and some are saying LE is fine.

“We’ve got both technologies and we’ve sold a lot of LE-UV but we thought we’d show LED-UV on this machine to get it out there and have a debate with our customers.”

Both presses are commercially available immediately and lead times are between four to five months, Todd added.

Heidelberg will host a technical introduction to the two presses at the open house and there will also be a number of sessions covering issues including data analysis, MIS, ‘push to stop’ folding, post-press packaging and colour automation for digital printing.

Specialists from each product area will be on hand to answer questions and visitors will also have access to coffee and lunch services.

The showroom will be open from 9am to 5pm on both days and visitors can pre-book timed slots for the sessions, a full list of which are available at: http://www.heidelbergevents.co.uk.