THE ECHO - Ferrostaal

44
services & logistics
01
LEADING COLUMBIAN PRINTER
GOES LARGE
Printer Colombiana, leading producer of high-quality books and magazines, confides part of its printing operations to the
extra-large format technology from MAN. The machine that will be used is the MAN Roland 904-7B XXL.
A vast and completely empty warehouse is
the image that comes to mind when Juan
Guillermo Giraldo, CEO of Printer
Colombiana, remembers his job interview
with Gerhard Schropp 30 years ago. The
German businessman showed the young
engineer the spaces where his machinery
would soon be printing the thousands of
books and magazines to meet the demands
of a reading boom sweeping many Latin
American countries at the time.
Gerhard Schropp was in charge of setting
up Printer Colombiana in Colombia, a
business that would mainly produce
books. The sales platform of the Círculo de
Lectores, then owned by the Bertelsmann
Group, whereby books could be paid for
in instalments, sparked an enormous
interest in reading throughout the region.
Colombia was chosen as a strategic
location for printing and meeting that
demand.
The once-empty space, located in an industrial
area in Bogotá, is now full of the
smells of ink and paper and the constant
sounds of printing presses and a team
of professionals hard at work. This team
makes Printer Colombiana the leading
producer of books and magazines in
Colombia, and the sixth largest on the
Latin American market.