Heidelberg’s largest Mainstream 80 installation to date is at Trafford Park Printers in Manchester, England, where commissioning of two Mainstream 80 presses is well underway.

Trafford Park prints The Daily Telegraph (daily, 1.03 million) and The Sunday Telegraph (Sunday, 805,316), and the first live production run on the new presses was completed on June 26. The Mainstreams consist of two folders with six towers each, seven reelstands each and 35 printing couples each. The two presses can be operated independently or as one press.

The Mainstream press configuration at Trafford Park Printers in Manchester, England.
Graphic courtesy of Heidelberg
click to enlarge image (69K)

Trafford Park Printers is a joint venture company between The Daily Telegraph, owned by Hollinger, and Guardian Media Group.

“The Daily Telegraph prints (approximately) one million copies per day, of which Trafford Park does normally about 330,000, seven days per week, including The Sunday Telegraph. The balance is printed by our sister company, West Ferry Printers in London,” said Jacques de Wit, managing director of Trafford Park Printers.

Trafford Park also prints 130,00 to 150,000 copies, Monday through Saturday, for newspaper titles of Guardian Media Group. Before the Heidelberg expansion, Trafford Park was using four Goss presses — two to print The Daily Telegraph and two to print the Guardian titles.

“The Telegraph decided about two years ago they needed to re-equip and we bought two Heidelberg presses for Trafford Park and — although we haven’t signed a contract yet — five presses for West Ferry Printers in London,” de Wit said.

Trafford Park has already done several trials and has successfully run six webs at 77,000 copies per hour on the Mainstreams, which are designed for print runs of up to 80,000 cph. A supplement for The Daily Telegraph is now being printed on one of the Mainstreams each week and in August, Trafford Park began the first night production of The Telegraph on the new presses.

“I [have] migrated production from the Goss presses onto the Heidelberg presses, a little bit at a time,” de Wit said.

The older Goss T-60 double-wide presses were installed in approximately 1986.

“They’re a good 16 or 17 years old and they’ve worked very hard, because the total output in this plant is something like 8 million copies per week,” de Wit said.

With five presses, the Mainstream installation at West Ferry Printers in London would be a much larger installation than Manchester. However, that sale is dependent upon performance of the presses in Manchester.

“The two presses at Trafford Park are part of a seven press order with Heidelberg. That contract (at West Ferry Printers) hasn’t been signed yet,” de Wit said.

“It is part of our agreement with Heidelberg to first install the two presses at Trafford Park. We have to accept them here before the order at West Ferry goes through.

“When we placed the order for the presses at Drupa in 2000 — at that stage — the only press we had actually seen run of this model was the one at Drupa. So we were buying, to some extent, something that wasn’t proven. The whole idea is that the two presses in Trafford Park have to be commissioned, accepted and be in regular daily production before we proceed with the order for the five presses in London.”

The Mainstream 80 displayed at Drupa 2000 was sold to Danish newspaper printer, Dansk Avistryk.

Trafford Park expects the Mainstream 80s in Manchester to be accepted and in full daily production by the end of September.

“[Heidelberg’s] commitment is outstanding. Of course, they have a lot to prove,” he said. “This is a big installation for them. If this one didn’t go well it would be bad news for us and, I guess, bad news for Heidelberg.”

Heidelberg relationship grows

Trafford Park’s relationship with Heidelberg has been built since becoming interested in the 4-by-1 Mainstreams at Drupa. De Wit assembled a team of six printers and one press hall manager that are solely committed to working on the Mainstreams with Heidelberg employees.

“The installation at Trafford Park is part of a 32-million-pound sterling investment (approximately $50 million U.S.). So it’s a big investment,” de Wit said.

Re-equipping The Daily Telegraph with new presses was a necessity for Trafford Park because the older Goss presses are limited in terms of color capacity.

“They still have a lot of life left in them, but have little color availability,” de Wit said. “We’re increasing our color now by 50 percent with the Heidelberg presses.”

Although the new presses have 12 towers, they are not fully populated, meaning more color can be implemented by adding extra printing couples.

“They’re relatively easy and it’s a cheaper way of increasing color availability — rather than the (Goss) T-60 presses, where … we print with color satellites and we can only print 4-by-1,” de Wit said.

Gapless blankets use air pressure

The sleeve concept of the Mainstream 80 is unique, Heidelberg officials said. Traditional newspaper printing presses use rubber, or flat blankets (or sleeves) with two bars on each end. Blankets fit around the cylinder and there are two bars that fit into a groove in the cylinder.

The Mainstreams, however, have a sleeve that is applied on the blanket cylinder with air pressure. Air pressure expands the sleeve and it can then be slid onto the blanket cylinder. When the air pressure is taken away, the sleeve fits tightly onto the blanket cylinder. This gapless blanket concept is designed to eliminate gap-related vibration.

“This is quite revolutionary in newspaper printing,” de Wit said.

Although Trafford Park Printers has done numerous press runs of the supplements to The Daily Telegraph, the blankets need more tests.

“We need to now prove them in long-term production [and with] long print runs,” de Wit said. “From our point of view, of course, they need to have similar, if not better blanket life than the traditional blanket, because they are more expensive. It’s far too early to say if we are going to get that blanket life, but all the indications are that it should not be a problem.”

The Mainstreams do not have an on-press blanket washing system, so Trafford Park purchased four off-line blanket washers and one of the washers has been commissioned.

“It is relatively quick, but due to the large number of blanket sleeves, there is a bit of a logistics problem, which we are trying to solve by trial and error,” de Wit said. “We are trying to establish the best way of handling the blanket sleeves.”

Trafford Park has been testing a Techni Web blanket washer and de Wit said if it is successful it will be retrofit onto the presses to minimize the need to remove blankets for washing.

Since the washing is not done on the press, sleeve storage might also have been an issue – but not for Trafford Park.

“We are fortunate in that our sleeve supplier has a facility just a few miles from our plant, so they store our sleeves for us,” de Wit said. “We have manufactured a storage rack, which we are currently [testing] to see if it will meet our needs. This is a very large press and we will have to learn over time what is the best way of handling and storing these blanket sleeves.”

Employees committed to new press

De Wit credits what has so far been a successful press implementation, to commitment from employees and commitment from Heidelberg.

“At the moment, I’m a very happy customer,” he said. “We’re working well together as a team and that’s important when you have a big project like this. When you have problems — which you will always have at some stage with a big installation — it’s really important that my people and Heidelberg’s people work well together to address those challenges.

“I think all the foundations are in place for this to be a successful installation and in the next three to six months, we’ll hopefully prove that.”

Heidelberg lands Mainstream 80 sale at Le Progrés

French regional newspaper Le Progrés, based in Lyon, France and owned by Holding Delaroche, is investing in two Mainstream 80 presses with a total of 64 printing couples to be installed at its printing facility in Chassieu, France. A single press is to be installed in Saint-Etienne.



The press configuration of two Mainstream 80 presses to be installed at Le Progrés in France.
Graphic courtesy of Heidelberg

The Mainstreams at Le Progrés will replace presses that were installed 30 years ago.