10.03.23
On Sept. 29, 2023, Koenig & Bauer celebrated the 125th anniversary of its location in Radebeul near Dresden.
With its 1,800 employees, the factory is today considered the largest engineering compa-ny in Saxony. It is the modern-day successor to Dresdner Schnellpressenfabrik, the com-pany founded on Blasewitzer Straße in Dresden in 1898 by Joseph Hauss and Alfred Sparbert. It relocated to Brockwitz just two years later before moving premises again in 1911, namely to Radebeul-Naundorf, where the company still has its offices today.
The company caught the attention of the world market from the very beginning. The first in a stream of innovative solutions was a “fixture for moving the printing foundation of high-speed printing presses,” the planetary drive, which lent its name to decades of press models and was adopted as the name for the whole company from 1938.
In 1932, Planeta produced the world’s first four-color sheetfed offset press. Another world first designed in Radebeul was a unit-based sheetfed offset press unveiled in 1965. This design principle has since become the accepted norm and has remained the industry standard to this day.
Rapida sheetfed offset presses today deliver an unrivalled performance in many format classes and are also makeready world champions. The Rapida 106 X reaches outputs of up to 20,000 sheets per hour. With its comprehensive automation solutions, it is the press that defines the future for sheetfed offset.
There were, unavoidably, also a few lows and darker periods to be endured over the course of 125 years of manufacturing at the location. These included two world wars, hy-perinflation and currency reforms, the planned economy of the GDR years, subsequent restructuring for a market economy and the catastrophic Elbe floods of 2002.
Time and again, however, the employees stood by their company – with passionate commitment, consummate skill and countless good ideas for ways to advance the fortunes of the press engineering.
Today, the Koenig & Bauer factory in Radebeul represents much more than just the group’s value center for classic sheetfed offset. It also bundles all group activities relating to an integrated packaging production workflow.
Alongside sheetfed offset presses, Radebeul design engineers working within the frame-work of a joint venture with the company Durst have developed the VariJET 106, a digital printing press that combines the strengths of inkjet with the benefits of an offset process.
By bringing together important elements of the two processes, the new press raises pack-aging printing to the next level and enables the production of innovative, future-oriented packaging solutions. The first presses in this series were put into operation by users over the past few months.
The Radebeul factory is today the largest Koenig & Bauer location and home to three business units: Koenig & Bauer Sheetfed, responsible for the market segments sheetfed offset and post-press equipment (including development, production, sales and service), Koenig & Bauer Industrial as an internal and external production services provider, and Koenig & Bauer Deutschland as the sales and service company for the German, Austrian and Swiss markets.
All three business units are fundamental elements of the overall Koenig & Bauer Group. At the same time, together with many suppliers and business partners, they form a sound basis for the local and regional labor market in the Upper Elbe valley.
With its 1,800 employees, the factory is today considered the largest engineering compa-ny in Saxony. It is the modern-day successor to Dresdner Schnellpressenfabrik, the com-pany founded on Blasewitzer Straße in Dresden in 1898 by Joseph Hauss and Alfred Sparbert. It relocated to Brockwitz just two years later before moving premises again in 1911, namely to Radebeul-Naundorf, where the company still has its offices today.
The company caught the attention of the world market from the very beginning. The first in a stream of innovative solutions was a “fixture for moving the printing foundation of high-speed printing presses,” the planetary drive, which lent its name to decades of press models and was adopted as the name for the whole company from 1938.
In 1932, Planeta produced the world’s first four-color sheetfed offset press. Another world first designed in Radebeul was a unit-based sheetfed offset press unveiled in 1965. This design principle has since become the accepted norm and has remained the industry standard to this day.
Rapida sheetfed offset presses today deliver an unrivalled performance in many format classes and are also makeready world champions. The Rapida 106 X reaches outputs of up to 20,000 sheets per hour. With its comprehensive automation solutions, it is the press that defines the future for sheetfed offset.
There were, unavoidably, also a few lows and darker periods to be endured over the course of 125 years of manufacturing at the location. These included two world wars, hy-perinflation and currency reforms, the planned economy of the GDR years, subsequent restructuring for a market economy and the catastrophic Elbe floods of 2002.
Time and again, however, the employees stood by their company – with passionate commitment, consummate skill and countless good ideas for ways to advance the fortunes of the press engineering.
Today, the Koenig & Bauer factory in Radebeul represents much more than just the group’s value center for classic sheetfed offset. It also bundles all group activities relating to an integrated packaging production workflow.
Alongside sheetfed offset presses, Radebeul design engineers working within the frame-work of a joint venture with the company Durst have developed the VariJET 106, a digital printing press that combines the strengths of inkjet with the benefits of an offset process.
By bringing together important elements of the two processes, the new press raises pack-aging printing to the next level and enables the production of innovative, future-oriented packaging solutions. The first presses in this series were put into operation by users over the past few months.
The Radebeul factory is today the largest Koenig & Bauer location and home to three business units: Koenig & Bauer Sheetfed, responsible for the market segments sheetfed offset and post-press equipment (including development, production, sales and service), Koenig & Bauer Industrial as an internal and external production services provider, and Koenig & Bauer Deutschland as the sales and service company for the German, Austrian and Swiss markets.
All three business units are fundamental elements of the overall Koenig & Bauer Group. At the same time, together with many suppliers and business partners, they form a sound basis for the local and regional labor market in the Upper Elbe valley.