Koenig & Bauer Rapida 76 – The Flexible B2 Solution for Commercial, Label, and Profitable Packaging Printing

• Extreme flexibility: Live demos showed ultra-fast job changes between complex commercial, label, and folding carton jobs.
• Business model expansion: Processing board up to 1.0 mm thick at 18,000 sheets/hour opens up the lucrative premium packaging market for commercial printers
• Quantifiable P&L advantage: Simultaneous makeready processes (SPC) and inline measuring technology reduce job changeover times by up to 30 per cent and drastically reduce waste
• Platform strategy: Utilises many high-end automation components (e.g. SPC, SIS) and quality standards of the Rapida 106 ‘Royal Class’ in the most compact space
• Genuine user proof: Customers report stability with 19 job changes per day and switching from competitors due to the strong customer focus
• ‘Trusted Advisor’ approach: Holistic consulting on financing (Elbe-Leasing) and business optimisation (Graphic Consult) secures the investment

Under the motto “Half Format – Full Performance,” Koenig & Bauer proved at the Open House at the Radebeul site that the Rapida 76 masters the balancing act in the demanding B2 market. In front of guests from many European countries, the machine demonstrated its extreme flexibility live – from demanding commercial jobs to labels and high-end folding carton production. The central message: Printing companies no longer have to choose between commercial efficiency and packaging stability.

A central item on the agenda was the ‘Voice of the Customer’ reports, which substantiated the strategic benefit of the machine in practice.

• Matthias Herrmann (Managing Director, Schmidt & Buchta GmbH), a Rapida 76 user since 2019, emphasised the machine’s reliability in a high-performance environment with an average of 19 commercial job changes per day.
• Oscar Pepermans (Owner, Rutgers Printing & Packaging Solutions, NL), who has been operating the new Rapida 76 since mid-2024, highlighted that the investment provides him with a significant competitive advantage. The entire production process has become notably more efficient.
• Kurt Schergen (Operations Manager, Druckhaus WITTICH KG, Föhren), a new customer who switched to the Rapida 76 from other German manufacturers, cited the product and the “strong customer focus” of the local Koenig & Bauer organisation as decisive criteria.

The Rapida 76 proved how this automation advantage translates directly into the customers' Profit and Loss (P&L) statement in live demonstrations: it showed its application breadth through rapid changes between a folding carton job, a commercial job on offset paper, and a job on coated art paper.

As proof of the ‘Trusted Advisor’ approach, the expansion of the value chain was presented live: The processing of a typical commercial job – the event folder – was shown on the Ipress 106 PRO SB flatbed die-cutter. With this, Koenig & Bauer demonstrated practically how customers can expand their business model into profitable markets by combining printing and finishing.

The key to profitability lies in consistent automation, which is directly based on the Group’s modular platform strategy. For the customer this means:

1. Technology Transfer from the Royal Class: The Rapida 76 uses exactly the same proven automation components as the Rapida 106, including simultaneous makeready processes (SPC) and the sidelay-free infeed system DriveTronic SIS. This ensures maximum reliability and performance.
2. Premium Quality: The machine undergoes exactly the same processes and strict quality assurance criteria as the Rapida 106 format class and the large-format series.
3. Inline Quality Control: Systems such as QualiTronic ColorControl and PDFCheck ensure colour accuracy from the very first sheet, reduce makeready time by up to 30 per cent per job, reduce waste, and improve margins.
4. Efficiency in a Small Space: The Rapida 76 offers this high-end performance on an extremely compact footprint, which is noticeably smaller than comparable machines, saving valuable production space.

These platform advantages directly contribute to P&L optimisation: the simultaneous makeready and washing processes reduce job changeover times by up to 30 per cent and make even the smallest runs profitable. High-end double coating units and cold foil packages, adapted from the Rapida 106, enable premium finishing in a single pass and increase value creation.

“This Open House has made one thing absolutely clear to me: the time for compromises in the B2 format is over,” said Markus Weiß, CEO of Koenig & Bauer Paper & Packaging Sheetfed Systems and member of the Group Management of Koenig & Bauer.

“We have consistently transferred the proven high-end technology of our Rapida 106 ‘Royal Class’ to this format. The result is a machine that resolves the ‘either-or’ in this segment: user reports of 19 job changes per day prove superior efficiency in commercial printing. At the same time, the robust platform of the Rapida 106 gives it the stability to confidently process 1.0 mm thick board for the premium packaging market. The enthusiastic reports from our customers, who confirm exactly this unique bandwidth in practice or consciously choose our complete package of technology and strong customer focus, show that our approach is the right one.”