ACTEGA and Koenig & Bauer are reporting their success in supporting customers with new products and services during the pandemic.

Throughout 2020 and to date, the two partners maintained their product development program, designing, testing, and rolling out new solutions from a dedicated Koenig & Bauer Customer Experience Center. This sustained commitment to customer service ensured that many print houses were able to utilize the latest ACTEGA products and further optimize their Rapida presses, providing them with increased flexibility, creativity, and speed-to-market.

“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,” explains Eric Frank, senior vice president 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.”

Lee Andrews, vice president, Paper & Board Business Line, ACTEGA, adds, “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. 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.”

Utilizing the capabilities of the Koenig & Bauer Customer Experience Center, 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.

As well as the long-term support and access to new solutions, users can take advantage of an ACTEGA starter kit. This kit was developed to optimize the print produced on any Rapida press for premium applications or everyday products in a variety of market sectors, including commercial print, folding carton, and corrugated packaging. 

“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,” says 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.”

Frank continues, “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. 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.”