IVE Group, Australia’s largest diversified marketing company, has installed sheetfed offset presses from Koenig & Bauer at its newly built 42,000-square-meter production and logistics hub in Kemps Creek, Sydney. The ASX-listed company, which employs more than 2,100 people across 22 sites, said the installation supports its strategy to build packaging capacity in New South Wales that mirrors its existing capacity in Victoria.
“The installation of an identical Koenig & Bauer press fleet is a core element of our investment strategy, designed to build a packaging capacity in New South Wales that exactly mirrors that in Victoria,” said Matt Aitken, managing director of IVE Group. “This enables us to serve national brands and drastically accelerate our time-to-market once again.”
The company was originally founded in 1921 by Oscar Selig as a local newspaper and has grown over the course of a century into its current form.
Aitken said the expansion of the company’s packaging printing operations is intended to strengthen this segment of the business. “The investment we have made with these presses is creating a genuine ‛wow’ factor for our customers,” he said. “The clients who have visited us are highly impressed and love what we have done.”
The new Rapida presses are configured for high throughput alongside color fidelity. In live production at the new plant, the 7-color Rapida 106 X hybrid press has been notable for its performance. It is configured with a double coater, a triple extended delivery, and the DriveTronic SPC system for simultaneous plate changing. It is paired with a second Rapida 106 X, a 10-color press with perfecting and a coater, suited to the production of magazine covers.
Both lines are described as the first sheetfed offset presses in Australia to reach production speeds of up to 20,000 sheets per hour. Rayne Simpson, sales manager at Koenig & Bauer Australia, said the results place IVE among top performers globally, with the presses producing at maximum output and reaching peak values across key performance indicators.
To reduce makeready times, the presses include automation features such as simultaneous plate changing with DriveTronic SPC, along with quality measuring and control systems intended to monitor production, speed up press setups, and maintain consistent print quality from the first sheet to the last. “Running the press at 20,000 sheets an hour is one thing, but maintaining our quality standards at the same time is another entirely,” Aitken said.
The installation followed a three-year planning phase during which Koenig & Bauer worked with IVE to identify the technology configuration intended to support the company’s targets in the packaging market. “From day one, there was strong alignment between our teams,” Aitken said. “Koenig & Bauer understood what we wanted to build in Australia and collaborated with us to find the technology that best supported this vision.”
Graham Harris, managing director of Koenig & Bauer Australia, credited the cooperation of the IVE Group management team during the installation process at the new site. “IVE is an incredibly professional company,” he said. “It makes installing printing presses significantly easier when you are working alongside team members like Kane Flynn, Simon Bailey and Shane Britten at a new site such as Kemps Creek.”
