International Toymaker Ravensburger Uses Heidelberg’s Speedmaster Technology

Ravensburger AG is one of the world’s leading producers of board and card games, toys, jigsaw puzzles, and children’s books. Boasting both German and international brands such as Brio, Think-Fun, and Wonder-Forge, the company employs more than 2,300 staff worldwide. Most of its products are developed and manufactured in-house.

The demand for jigsaws and games is currently exhibiting strong growth. This is demonstrated, among other things, by Ravensburger’s in-house print volume, which has increased significantly in recent years. Tobias Liebing, the company’s head of production, has the figures to prove it: “In the space of three years, the number of sheets printed at Ravensburger has risen from 37 million to 49 million.”

Sheetfed offset printing is used in the competence center for print production at the company’s site in Ravensburg. Paper grades, formats, and the ink sequence are largely standardized. A Heidelberg Speedmaster XL 106-5+L from Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG (Heidelberg) – a five-color system with coating unit – was taken into operation in summer 2021. An extended sheet format of 76 x 106 centimeters (standard format: 75 x 106 centimeters) means utilization of the printable sheet area can be optimized when producing multiple-ups.

The Speedmaster XL 106 is a highly automated system from the 2020 generation with a Push to Stop configuration. Jobs that are added to the job queue are completed automatically. The Intellistart 3 assistance software analyzes the jobs in the list and determines independently which makeready sequences to activate during a job change.

Plate to Gallery is an automated plate logistics solution that lifts the printing plates to gallery level on the press. Thanks to AutoPlate Pro, it takes little more than two minutes to change an entire set of plates fully automatically in all five printing units.

“With four or five job changes an hour, the speed of makeready processes determines how cost-effective production is,” Liebing said.

The results of the test run were borne out in practice. Six months on from commissioning, Liebing reports the technical availability of the press is 99.4%. “This printing system has well and truly won us over,” he said.