El Safa Press is investing heavily in the future viability of its production and strengthening its position as one of the leading packaging manufacturers in the Middle East and Africa region. With state-of-the-art technology from Koenig & Bauer, the company is perfectly positioned to flexibly meet the high demands of its international customer base in a constantly changing market environment.
As part of a comprehensive modernisation strategy, the long-established company based in Alexandria has ordered an extensive package of highly automated Rapida sheetfed offset presses in medium and large formats from Koenig & Bauer. The objective of this technology offensive is to respond flexibly to increased market demands for shorter delivery times, maximum flexibility and technical excellence in packaging printing.
Left to right: Karim Elbialy (El Safa), Adnan Halabi (Koenig & Bauer), Samir Elbialy (El Safa), Dietmar Heyduck (Koenig & Bauer) and Sherif Sidhom (Sidhom Printing Supplies).
As a trusted advisor, Koenig & Bauer supports El Safa in a targeted manner to operationally navigate typical market challenges, such as the shortage of skilled workers and the pressure for ever-shorter delivery times. Thanks to the high degree of automation of the supplied Rapida platforms, El Safa successfully reduces set-up times dramatically and noticeably lowers waste. This directly optimizes the packaging manufacturer’s profit and loss account (P&L) and secures consistently flawless, highly economical world-class production.
With more than 700 employees and a production area of over 16,500 sqm in the industrial zone of Merghem, El Safa is one of the driving forces of the Egyptian economy. This major investment underscores the confidence in the long-standing partnership with Koenig & Bauer, as well as the strong support provided by the local sales and service partner Sidhom on site. For Koenig & Bauer, this order also serves as confirmation of its own market strategy, in which Egypt acts as a key market and an important gateway to the markets in Africa.
The tailor-made press package covers both the highly productive and widely used medium format and the high-volume large format. This allows El Safa to specifically replace older, existing machinery and elevate its flexibility to a new level:
- Rapida 106: a six-colour press with a coating unit and a seven-colour press with double-coating equipment for maximum performance of up to 18,000 sheets per hour, even in non-stop operation; end-to-end logistics connection and equipped with fully automatic plate changing (FAPC) as well as state-of-the-art quality management technology
- Rapida 145: the six-colour press with a coating unit offers the same end-to-end automation and quality management architecture. They enable El Safa to process significantly larger sheet formats with the highest colour fidelity and minimal waste, drastically reducing unit costs in packaging printing
All presses are equipped with integrated coating units to implement the market’s sophisticated finishing requirements – from glossy protective coatings to complex matte-gloss effects – inline and thus highly efficiently, in line with El Safa’s core mission.
The investment is a direct response to the noticeable trend towards more complex packaging designs and tighter delivery windows, enabling El-Safa to realign itself in the evolving packaging market.
This technological leap in sheetfed offset printing is complemented by an end-to-end workflow extending right into the postpress segment. Here, El Safa relies on equipment including the Optima 106 flatbed die-cutter and OMEGA Allpro folder-gluers to transfer the high throughput of the printing presses directly into the final processing stage without any bottlenecks.
With this holistic technological realignment, El Safa continues to ensure its domestic and international customers premium quality and reliable supply chains – true to the corporate philosophy of delivering genuine customer value through innovation and reliable partnerships.
