Foster Printing Invests in Large Format KBA Press

KBA North America announced that The Foster Printing Company of Tustin, California, has purchased a Rapida 162a 64-inch six-color plus UV coating sheetfed press, which is currently being installed at Foster?s newly-expanded 40,000-square-foot facility. This will be the fourth KBA press operated by the family-owned large-format printing firm.

“Our new KBA large-format press will be taking us to the highest level of customer satisfaction and company growth,” says Kris Blackburn, vice president of sales at Foster Printing. “The press is the industry’s best and will allow us to continue to innovate for our current and future customer base.”

The new KBA Rapida 162a press provides Foster with press features that it has never had before. These special unique features—such as automatic plate changing, automatic plate washup, KBA’s Densitronic Professional closed-loop color control system, KBA’s Logotronic Management system, and inline UV capabilities—allow the company to provide higher quality, faster turnaround, and additional value-added unique work.

Faster makeready, less waste, higher quality

“We wanted to take advantage of all of KBA’s automation and technology to enable us to take our customers’ jobs to the highest level,” explains Blackburn. “With our new KBA, we’ll be able to makeready the press in much less time with much less waste sheets. Press speed will also increase dramatically on our new press. We’ll be able to print from 40# to 48 pt. with a max sheet size of 47 x 64-inches.”

Foster’s inline UV capability will be used for both environmental benefits and fast turnaround times. Having the press equipped with UV capabilities will allow the firm to cure its printed sheets immediately, giving the company much more efficiency and throughput, but it will also help the firm to remain committed to the environment, a key consideration in Southern California.

“We’ve built a fine reputation of respect and service for our customers,” says Blackburn. “Those two key aspects will continue with our new press. This will allow us to build on our reputation of quality, turnaround, and speed, as well as innovation for particularly difficult jobs.”

The firm’s new workhorse

“We anticipate that the new Rapida 162a press will get the majority of our jobs and become our workhorse,” says Blackburn. “We’re also planning to add a weekend shift to augment our Monday through Thursday schedule of two 10-hour shifts.”

Foster Printing was established in 1922 by Walter Foster, who printed and published the widely recognized instructional Walter Foster Art Books. The business is still located off the 5 freeway just a few miles from Disneyland. In 1988, the Blackburn family purchased the assets from Walter Foster and restructured the company to include printing for the trade. Today, Foster Printing caters to its trade customers, which include printers, designers, corrugators, and distributors, as well as Walter Foster Art Books. The majority of its work is color packaging, point-of-purchase displays, signage, and posters, which is printed on a variety of substrates from paper to plastics.