- We study central collision of Pb + Pb at 20, 40, 80 and 160 A·GeV within the UrQMD transport approach and compare rapidity distributions of ,K+,K and with the recent measurements from the NA49 Collaboration at 40, 80 and 160 A·GeV. It is found that the UrQMD model reasonably describes the data, however, systematically overpredicts the yield by < 20%, whereas the K+ yield is underestimated by < 15%. The K yields are in a good agreement with the experimental data, the yields are also in a reasonable correspondence with the data for all energies. We find that hadronic flavour exchange reactions largely distort the information about the initial strangeness production mechanism at all energies considered. PACS: 25.75.+r