With its name steeped in the history of web-offset, Danish printing and publishing group Aller is significant customer for a press manufacturer to have on board.

Today, Aller Tryk is Scandinavia’s leading magazine printer, its products handled by 40 per cent of Denmark’s 5.6 million population. In the mid nineteenth century, however, Carl Aller was impressing fellow Danes with his advances in photolithography, even famously, demonstrating his ability to a bank by forging one of their banknotes.

What followed was a contribution to the development of Halley-Aller presses – much used by newspapers in the 1970s – and that company’s acquisition by Baker Perkins and then Goss.

All of which adds a degree of poetry to Aller Tryck’s order this week for a second Lithoman press made by one-time German rival manroland.

In fact, it’s one of many: The new short-grain 48-page press with autprint automation – almost identical to one installed at Aller’s Taastrup print site in early 2010 and set to replace two older presses – is the fifth Lithoman within the group.

Managing director Jesper Jungersen says the comprehensive automation will be significantly reduce makeready times and waste rates: “This is a main success factor for us to strengthen our business in the printing industry,” he says.

The new press will have a cylinder circumference of 872 mm and a maximum web width of 1980 mm, with a top speed of 65,000 cylinder rph.

Established in 1873, Aller Holding publishes magazines and weekly newspapers in the Nordic region with a weekly circulation of approximately 3.2 million copies, about 700,000 of which go to Danish readers.

Aller Tryk in Taastrup prints 14 of Denmark and Sweden’s top-selling weekly magazines.

Pictured: Jesper Jungersen (right) with manroland web sales vice president Josef Aumiller and sales deputy vice president Klaus Streit