By Ryan Olson
Associate Editor

In a recent test of newspaper consumables for new press owners, users spent some time learning the importance of finding the right materials for ideal press operation.

Suppliers of newsprint, ink, plates, dampening solution, rollers and blankets underwent testing May 21-23 at MAN Roland’s Plamag training center in Plauen, Germany, during a series of tests set up for customers already committed to purchasing RegioMAN presses.

Participants in the test program included representatives from six dailies that are installing or will install the new presses — the first six in the world. They included the Daily Herald in Arlington Heights, Ill.; the Union-News/Sunday Republican in Springfield, Mass.; the Flint Journal and the Kalamazoo Gazette, both in Michigan; the Knoxville (Tenn.) News Sentinel and Valley Publishing, parent of Michigan’s Bay City Times.

The test session used the RegioMAN press in Plauen to compare consumables from several American manufacturers. According to MAN Roland, the trial was the culmination of seven months of preparation that included the selection of suppliers and the consumables they would provide. Contacts between the RegioMAN users and the suppliers were established at that time, so customers could state their requirements from the beginning.

RegioMAN users and manufacturers of consumables from the United States met at the MAN Roland Plamag Works in Plauen, Germany to test consumables on the RegioMAN and determine optimum combinations.
Photo courtesy of MAN Roland

Working with the suppliers during the evaluation, the RegioMAN users experimented with a variety of materials in order to determine the optimum combination for their new presses.

“This user-driven testing will save time and money later on, as each of these customers ramps up for their first production runs on their own RegioMAN presses,” said Vince Lapinski, vice president of web operations for MAN Roland Inc. “RegioMAN is designed to make the newspapers that run it more flexible and more productive. This evaluation helps us ensure that the consumables our customers will be using contribute to achieving those goals.”

Twelve individual tests were run using a variety of different consumable products, said Jim Foley, production director at the Union-News/Sunday Republican, who headed up the contingent of newspaper production executives.

Jim Foley

“The press was cleaned and conditions … were the same from test to test, making the test results very reliable,” Foley said.

“Each test was run for 30 to 40 minutes on the press. During the testing approximately 350,000 test copies were produced. Both the prints and the measured objective criteria like density and dot gain, as well as the subjective criteria, have shown that all these materials were really satisfying. The printing quality was stable and good throughout the testing period. The customer objectives of the tests were fully achieved.”

The group of suppliers included Bowater Paper, Flint Ink, U.S. Ink, Varn International, Pressroom Solutions, Boettcher, Day International, Reeves, Conti Tech, Agfa, Eurografica, Pape & Partner Media and Votra.

While consumable testing is something that has being going on in the industry for some time, MAN Roland has been the first major press manufacturer to take an active role in testing consumables, as participants explained.

“The test criteria and parameters were established by the MAN Roland RegioMAN customers, working in conjunction with the vendors. MAN Roland created the test worksheets and tracking documents based on these parameters,” Foley said. “To date, the RegioMAN press has run only in Germany, and we felt it important to establish that the press would perform to expectations using the consumable products commonly used in the United States. We also wanted to be sure that the products supplied by our vendors would not damage any of the press components.”

Foley and a number of other industry members witnessed the testing and expressed a belief in the importance of maintaining consumable quality.

“It’s kind of like doing homework in advance. When you have a new press in your facility, this helps take some of the product variable out of that equation, so you’re not trying to research attributes of your consumables, while at the same time de-bugging your new press,” said Norm Harbin, vice president of technical and market development for Flint Ink’s newspaper division.

“It makes for a more efficient startup and less to do once that thing is starting up and everyone’s watching your performance, because of the very high expectations on a new installation. The more you can do in advance so that that startup is smoother, the better off you end up being.”

Despite the fact that consumable vendors may see the issue of quality from a different perspective than that of a newspaper, both groups place a high level of importance on successfully finding the best combination of materials for a press. For a vendor such as Flint, the benefits are twofold.

“We can let the customer see the attributes of our products and we get feedback to make it do everything they want it to do, and secondly (we can) make sure that within Flint Ink we know that our products perform to our expectations,” Harbin said.

For newspaper customers, the startup of a new press is always a project that users try to make as smooth as possible, and it was a major goal of the testing to help ease the installation and startup process for new users.

“The overall goal of the project was to sufficiently test consumable products to reduce the risk of poor print quality or unnecessary startup delays because consumable variables were not properly identified,” Foley said.

“An additional goal of the project was to establish several vendors for each of the consumable products, making purchasing choices possible. The final goal was to provide customers with detailed results of the testing, in an electronic format that can be used in the future as a reference.”

Providing customers with choices when it comes to obtaining consumables is vital to attaining desired results, and with the help of MAN Roland users are coming closer to being able to see participation from the entire industry spectrum.

“There have been different approaches, and historically there are a number of newspapers that bring suppliers together to facilitate interaction,” Harbin said. “Our people are important to our customers, and what a lot of papers have done is form teams with their suppliers. I think that MAN Roland is bringing this to a new level, where even before the press is bolted to the floor there is that interaction, at an even higher level. Historically that would start after the press was actually there. I like the thought of starting networking before the press is ready to be turned on — why wait until that point?”

“Testing consumables, and in particular testing how different products work together to maximize print quality and to minimize waste, is something newspapers should do routinely as part of normal operations,” Foley said. “I am not certain that the level of testing recently completed in Germany would be possible or necessary as an ongoing program, but certainly any newspaper installing and starting a new press should consider testing the various consumable products to improve their press performance on start-up.”

Although larger, more concentrated and planned testing efforts such as those done in Germany may not need to become commonplace, as Foley said, the importance of testing and networking on a smaller scale remains high.

“There are a number of efforts like this right now,” Harbin said. “What’s unique about it is how MAN Roland is at the forefront, because there isn’t really the intensity of this from another press manufacturer. We have similar relationships with some of our customers, and I’m an advocate of ‘the more that’s going on in our industry, the better.’ One example is The Toronto Star. Flint Ink is now a supplier of ink for The Toronto Star, and that came about as a result of a good product, and if we just sold ink I know we wouldn’t be as successful as really becoming involved in problems. Whether it’s ink, or fountain solution, or blanket wash … the more we’re interacting, the more appreciative I think customers are and the greater value they place on whatever products and services you provide.”

Selecting the right combination of consumable products to meet your overall press objectives is the biggest challenge, Foley said.

“All of the products will work, but some combinations are more effective in reducing waste, others for improving print quality while others enhance runnability. The value of testing is to put together the combination that will achieve all of these goals.”

“Years ago, say if you had a meeting with a newspaper and a number of different suppliers, they would not really say anything, and if there was a problem everyone would point to one another and be protective, and that’s kind of the old way of looking at things, I think,” Harbin said. “The more open you are, the more our customers value it — you’re putting information on the table that really means something, and it secures your position at papers as opposed to putting it in jeopardy. This is something that we’ve been an advocate of for some time, and it’s nice now seeing it being taken to a new level with this testing we did in Germany.”