Würzburg/Dobruška, 29 April 2008 -- Pending the approval of the competent authorities, KBA’s Czech subsidiary KBA-Grafitec in Dobruška is entering a strategic alliance with Adast in Adamov, near Brno.

According to the contracts signed by the two companies on 23 April in Dobruška, Adast discontinues the development, production and marketing of its own branded products to focus on providing KBA-Grafitec with parts and subassemblies. In return KBA-Grafitec will source a major proportion of its components from Adast. Other KBA production sites will also purchase from Adast where possible.

KBA-Grafitec has acquired Adast’s entire portfolio of product, patent and trademark rights, and while Adast will continue to honour current guarantees for its presses, once these expire all further services and spare parts will be provided by KBA-Grafitec. No details of the financial arrangements were revealed.

This strategic alliance will furnish KBA-Grafitec with the additional manufacturing capacity it needs to maintain the dynamic growth rates of the past three years. CEO Jens Junker says: “With Drupa in the offing, and following the successful debut at the pre-Drupa open house in early April of the Rapida 75 B2 press developed jointly with our colleagues at KBA Radebeul, we anticipate a huge boost in sales of our small-format presses. The rapid growth of the past three years has pushed us to the limit – neither we nor our suppliers have any capacity to spare. The alliance with Adast will give us both the extra capacity and the qualified personnel we need for future growth.”

For Adast, which was acquired a few years ago by a Prague investment company, the agreement represents a fresh start. As CEO Radovan Macek explains: “What Adast brings to the table is a long tradition of press engineering, and highly skilled staff. We have just come through an organisational shake-up that saw the payroll cut to 220. This alliance with KBA, one of the world’s foremost press manufacturers, will enable us to keep skilled jobs in this region and raise our profile as a specialist manufacturer of subassemblies and parts for KBA presses.”

Our view: The Indian subcontinent learned offset printing on Adast presses in the days when East European machines could be paid for in Rupees. Many printers began their offset journey with a Dominant single colour and went on to new and second-hand multicolour Dominants. Ultimately the faster growing printers moved to the better- known Japanese and German brands and new machines. For Indian printers this consolidation by KBA-Grafitec has come at the right time. Although the KBA Rapidas are selling and the cheaper KBA-Grafitec’s are still not moving in our market, we think that eventually they will find their niche.