manroland is celebrating the twentieth anniversary of its partnership with the former Plamag printing press factory in Plauen in the former East Germany.

Established for more than a century, the plant is now best known for the Uniset single-width newspaper press range, now well established in the Asia Pacific region. Uniset presses are a mainstay of Fairfax Media’s larger regional newspaper sites in Australia, and the world’s largest Uniset line – of 16 four-colour towers – is running at Singapore Press Holdings.

From 1946-1989, the Plauen plant built presses mostly for eastern bloc nations, but its production is now exported worldwide, as it had been when the factory began in 1896. The partnership with manroland in early 1990 followed German reunification, and representatives of both companies signed a declaration of intent about cooperation and a planned merger at DRUPA 1990. That northern autumn, an application under German anti-trust laws was approved and approved manroland took a majority interest in the Plamag Plauener Maschinenbau.

Expertise was shared and communication channels established, so employees from Plauen and Augsburg met to discuss sales, design, production, electrical systems, electronics and shipping, as well as marketing and human resources. Many Plamag employees worked for days, weeks, and even months at various departments in Augsburg to learn the methods applied there and to subsequently implement them at home. At the same time, specialists from Augsburg repeatedly visited Plauen to support the integration of functions, especially in administration areas.

Plamag became responsible for manroland’s expansion into four and eight-page web presses, with the Uniset eight-page series the first joint project, establishing the firm as a hybrid pioneer. Development milestones in the years 1996-1998 included the launch of the further-developed Uniset 70 and 50,000 cph Cromoman products – both with shaftless individual motor drives – as well as the Regioman 4x1 series shown at Ipex in 1998. The plant gained ISO 9001 quality management certification in March 1995.

MAN Plamag and MAN Roland merged in mid-2001, and with the retirement of long-serving chairman Dietrich Hartmann, Georg Riescher took opver as managing director.

manroland says that since 1990, more than 750 printing systems have been exported from Plauen to all corners of the world – which is more systems delivered in 19 years than during the entire previous 40 years in the former German Democratic Republic.

“The presses are larger, more complex, and all offer four-colour printing,” says a spokesman. “Today, media companies from Iceland to South Africa and from Hawaii via India to New Zealand rely on the quality of the Plauen company, which was renamed manroland in May 2008.”

Top: An early project team meeting
Below: Production of Uniset poresses at Plauen