ACTEGA, Koenig & Bauer Partner for Continuous Product Development

Partnerships can benefit everyone when they are successful.  ACTEGA, a subsidiary of ALTANA, and Koenig & Bauer, report they are successfully supporting customers with innovative products and services, designed to increase their competitive advantage – a strategy that proved essential while navigating the pandemic.

The two companies maintained their product development program, designing, testing and rolling out new solutions from a dedicated Koenig & Bauer Customer Experience Center. This ensured that many print houses were able to utilize the latest ACTEGA products and optimize their Rapida presses.

“In March 2020, Koenig & Bauer and ACTEGA announced that our partnership would be extended. As it happened, this news broke just a few days before COVID-19 really took hold of the world, disrupting every aspect of business and everyday life,” said Eric Frank, SVP of marketing, Koenig & Bauer. “As a result, it quickly became clear that our partnership was now more significant to our customers’ success than ever before. Time-to-market was suddenly even more critical for the food, beverage and pharmaceutical sectors, for example, and the brands that our customers serve had to adapt and keep pace as consumer buying habits changed overnight.”

“This sudden change in consumer behavior, combined with the restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic, required us to be creative and challenge ourselves to understand and then meet the new market requirements,” Lee Andrews, VP paper & board business line, ACTEGA, added. “Fortunately, our strong foundation and R&D partnership enabled us to do this, and we were able to continue to support our customers in a seamless manner. The subsequent customer feedback has been amazing.”

The combined R&D teams were able to replicate the environment of individual customer sites. This enabled them to test new ACTEGA products and Rapida press configurations, allowing customers to immediately add new solutions to their production processes.
 
“Both companies recognize the cost pressures that are ever present in the printing market and respond with high performing products that yield the lowest total cost of the printed piece,” said Andrews. “We offer premium products for specialty markets as well as a stable of low cost, high value products to meet the needs of the most competitive markets.” 

“Our partnership has always been about adding value to our customers’ printed products with ACTEGA consumables and optimizing their Rapida presses to perform at optimum capacity,” Frank noted. “Brands are competing for crowded shelf space and need to differentiate their products while ensuring brand continuity. Therefore, our customers are always looking to add value to their products, no matter what segment of the market they are in. By working with ACTEGA, we can offer these customers proven, sustainable solutions that deliver consistently high-quality results and enable them to stand out from their competitors.”