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THE TECNAU SPRING FORWARD EVENT

By Editor Morten B. Reitoft 

The Tecnau Spring Forward event took first place in 2021 due to the pandemic. People couldn't travel easily, and the need to present products had to find another frame. Like so many other vendors, Tecnau decided to do a virtual event but also agreed to develop it into a seamless experience with a mix of pre-recorded and live content. I was invited as moderator for the American and European editions, which was FUN.

Now people can travel, so would the Spring Forward continue in 2022? The team from Tecnau agreed to do a 2022 edition, but rather than repeating an already successful one; they further developed the format to include customers.

INKISH was asked to film four customers in Europe, and on the American side, WhatTheyThink was asked to film four American customers. And so we did! I won't talk about the American customers, as I haven't been there, and I am sure you, at some point, will be able to enjoy the replays of all of the Spring Forward events.

The first film we did was from Rotomail in Milan, Italy. As INKISH had already worked with Rotomail for some time, it was almost like coming home. Rotomail is an amazing printing company with more technology than most. It started as a transactional printing company, which they still do, but years ago, they decided to enter into the digital production of books. With two T490, one T380, and one T240, several HP Indigo's, a Canon Prostream, and binding equipment from Kolbus, Hunkeler, and, of course, Tecnau, the company is today well-positioned for large volume books of one production. At the Spring Forward event, Rotomail CEO Alessandro Antonuzzo discuss market trends, technology, and the future of books-of-one, with Tecnau Managing Director Stefano de Marco. Listening to the two men, who are second-generation managers of their respective companies, is very engaging.

Rotomail has a roll-to-roll strategy, so all printing, lamination, embellishment, etc., is based on this strategy. Covers, typically printed on their HP Indigo machines, are laminated roll-to-roll and then delivered to the Tecnau Libra 800 binding line. Rotomail can add two rolls of covers - typically one with gloss lamination and one with matt - or any combination they would require. The content comes from the T-series printers, and with the Libra 800 line, the content pages are now sliced, cut, and stacked into book blocks that hereafter is perfect bound - with or without flaps.

When we planned the European editions of the Spring Forward event, we wanted to produce content to learn from - and used the roundtable format where owners and vendors have the opportunity to interact - which, in my opinion, worked really well.

The roundtable discussions are split into product walk-throughs and separate interviews, bridging the story and hopefully giving the viewer a great experience. Therefore, in the first HP/Tecnau/Rotomail episode, we also get a chance to have a walkthrough of the HP T250 with Brilliant Ink, presented by Angel Martinez from HP's Barcelona facility. Stephen Goddard - also from HP, adds more perspectives to the trends and opportunities.

All facilitated in a 60-minute format - well attended, I would say!

After the visit to Rotomail, we went to Pulmen in Madrid. That was also a very cool visit and my first to Madrid - a fantastic city! Pulmen is also a book-of-one printing company specializing in children's books. Where Rotomail focused on roll-to-roll production, Pulmen bind in sheets; therefore, their two Screen Truepress 520's are equipped with unwinders and rewinders. Afterward, the roles are delivered to an unwinder and cut stacker delivering sheets for further finishing in their C.P. Bourgh binder.

With several Konica-Minolta cut-sheet toner printers, the combination gives Pulmen huge flexibility.

Maria Angeles Soria Garcia, Director of Marketing & HR and one of the owners of Pulmen, explains the strategy and how the collaboration between Screen and Tecnau's reseller Bowe Systec has perfected their production. The roundtable is in Spanish but subtitled; you should look forward to hearing the engaging conversation with Maria Angeles Soria Garcia, Javier Vaquero Barrios, and Screens regional sales manager Borja Henche Cuesta.

And as always, learn!

After Madrid Ziga, Jan and I flew via Amsterdam to Hannover to meet Sander Sondaal from Ricoh, Robert Gubo from Tecnau, and Arndt Wille and Christian Haneke from Sattler Media Group. Sattler Media Group is entirely different from the two other visits. We here see a printing company that produces web offset, cut-sheet offset, and digital. There is an exciting setup where the Ricoh Pro VC7000 is roll-fed, but before the buffer, a Tecnau splicer enables continuous print or easy change between substrates.

Sattler also has the opportunity to print roll-to-roll or to cut-stack, depending on what they need.

The roundtable was with Robert Gobu from Technau, Sander Sondaal from Ricoh, and Arndt Wille from Sattler. Christian Haneke from Sattler did an excellent walkthrough of the entire solution and gave valuable insights into why the different components were chosen.

Sattler Media Group prints many magazines, and their inkjet/binding solution produces inserts with personalized data - and as Arndt Wille says in the interview we did for INKISH when postage rates increase, the customer tends to choose smaller formats. The postcard is getting a renaissance with Sattler Media :-)

The last visit to our European Spring Forward tour was with KGM in Stockholm. This was the only transactional-printing company we visited. The company is one of the first in Scandinavia to have both the Canon Colorstream 8000 and Tecnau's Revolution 50-series.

When we got there, everything was just about to be postponed as the CEO, Mia Steen, lost her voice, and as you can imagine, roundtables and interviews without a voice are not the best. But fortunately, her colleague Johan Lansgard was able to jump in. Together with Thomas Olofsson from Tecnau and Matteus Celinski from Canon, we got through a roundtable that gave a great insight into why Canon and Tecnau were chosen.

For Canon, KGM is a new customer (at least at the Stockholm site), and the productivity gain KGM has experienced moving to inkjet is almost night-and-day.

As mentioned, KGM is a printing company specializing in transactional print. Amazing to see how many invoices are still generated on paper and how that sums up with equipment SO fast.

All four sites were amazing and again showed how different the same equipment can be used. Tecnau, Marketing Manager, Maurizio Gianetto did an excellent job in coordinating all the people needed for an event

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Author: Morten B. Reitoft
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