01.06.11 - Over 50 years ago, a bent Allen key revolutionized people’s attitude towards buying furniture. In 1963, a mouse sped up the development of computers. And they still pop up today, these ingenious little ideas that make possible what before seemed unimaginable. In newspaper production, the mini-plow certainly belongs among them.

“With the idea and the approach, the mini-plow has everything an invention needs to be successful. It is easy to operate, inexpensive to implement in production, requires little space, is universal in application, and offers many possibilities,” says Andreas Ullmann from Presse-Druck Augsburg, Germany.

Uniquely high number of product design possibilities
From a technical standpoint, the patented mini-plow folds the edge of the paper web a maximum width of 80 millimeters. From a marketing point of view, this sounds very different. For Media Markt, the consumer electronics store chain, “the striking special form of advertising was ideal for the giant re-opening of the company’s store in Augsburg-Göggingen following renovations”. Words of praise that Ulrich Hartmann, Managing Director of that store, especially directs at his media partner, the Augsburger Allgemeine. Thanks to the longstanding cooperation, Media Markt has time and again achieved maximum attention with new possibilities (most recently even in 3D) regarding quality and creativity in ads and supplements.

At Presse-Druck, the mini-plow supplements the other special forms of advertising perfectly. In the last two years, the company has developed many creative promotional products such as nano booklets and nano-fold posters, and now the mini-plow fold opens up completely new design possibilities.

Undemanding: mini-plow, maximum service
It is not difficult to expand the product range of an existing manroland press with the inexpensive mini-plow. The solely mechanical fold construction does not need a software link and can be fitted wherever there is a Bay Window possibility. Besides that, the mini-plow features intuitive operation, is sturdy, and designed to work with COLORMAN press speeds. Service for the mini-plow is of the usual high standard. To expand the production possibilities of existing presslines, manroland offers an upgrade that on request includes project planning, installation, commissioning and production monitoring.

(manroland.com)