CONTI-AIR® at SWUG 2007

The SWUG has been a fixture in the Australian media world for 22 years now. It provides a forum at which the elite among Australian newspaper printers can discuss in depth and exchange ideas on all aspects of newspaper production. Those attending have long since moved on from operating only single-width presses, and the number of attendees from abroad increases every time.

This year’s motto was “Nobody does it better”, and some 300 experts made the journey to Twin Waters, Queensland. It is a tradition at the SWUG conference that one of the newspaper publishers takes on the role of host and throws open its doors for a tour of its own production plant.

The privilege this year fell to APN in Yandina, Queensland, a user of CONTI-AIR metal printing blankets on the Regioman installed in 2006. Stephan Peters, CONTI-AIR Sales Manager for the South-East Asia region, was therefore assured of an attentive audience when he gave the assembled experts an overview of this technology which is still in its infancy. “We at CONTI-AIR see metal printing blankets as the future for newsprint operations,” he stated. “

The reasons for this are the smooth machine operation, the reduction in paper consumption and the time savings when changing the printing blankets.” In Australia too, where CONTI-AIR is one of the leading suppliers of newspaper printing blankets, customers can rely on CONTI-AIR’s support when they adopt this new technology. In addition to the technical papers, there was a series of interesting presentations under the title “Who am I?” – an opportunity to get to know major figures from the industry. “The SWUG conference enjoys a unique atmosphere of collaboration and cooperativeness – without doubt one of the best events of its kind in the world,” summed up Joachim Herrmann, R&D Manager Printing Blankets at CONTI-AIR, who had travelled to Australia from Germany specifically for this event.