Hammer Installs New 64-in. KBA Press

Published: March 30, 2010

ROCHESTER, NY | Hammer Packaging is said to be the only packaging printer in North America owning a new KBA Rapida 162 64-in. eight-color sheetfed press plus coater. Additional key accessories include a roll-to-sheet feeder, KBA Densitronic Professional color control system, and lightweight paper package.

“Our successful mantra has always been to innovate,” says Jim Hammer, president and CEO. “We lead the industry, not follow, In the past five years, we’ve doubled our sales growth and we’re anticipating that we’ll grow in double-digit figures during the next five years. We chose to partner with KBA because we feel that they are well-attuned to the market, and our relationship has bene very good since we purchased our first large-format press from them in 2005. Our new KBA Rapida 162 will be assigned to produce cut and stack labels for our high-end national accounts and we anticipate it will be running three shifts right away.”

The new press is claimed to put Hammer in the lead with capabilities, according to CEO Hammer. “Most of our competitors predominantly have six-color presses, and we’ve found that our customers will design their labels utilizing all eight colors. This differentiates us from our competitors. The lightweight paper package is especially important in our market because our customers are trying to shed as much weight as possible on their products to reduce costs. . . . Furthermore, we specified the KBA Densitronic Professional spectrophotometer color control system because it is used on all of our presses; it allows us to easily repeat customer jobs thus allowing us to shorten customer run lengths, while keeping their inventories low and allowing them to change their graphics as often as they wish.”