The Bakersfield Californian has completed the site-planning phase of its ambitious project to convert its old-fashioned mailroom into a new-fangled profit center.

The Californian (daily, 70,123; Sunday, 83,965) is the first U.S. newspaper to deploy Ferag’s RollStream inserter/collator system, which the supplier claims is capable of processing more than 45,000 copies per hour.


Alan Ferguson

Alan Ferguson, the daily’s general manager of operations, said he expects the new Ferag equipment, which will replace 20-year-old postpress hardware also manufactured by Ferag, to yield major upgrades in terms of speed, productivity, accountability and customer satisfaction.

Everything changing

“We’re changing everything,” Ferguson said of the all-Ferag mailroom conversion project, expected to be completed in 2004. “Everything from when the paper comes through the press clear to the loading dock — everything.”

To that end, The Californian is adding Ferag’s roll storage system, stacker, loaders and associated conveyors.

Ferguson declined to say how much the privately held newspaper is investing in the conversion.

Newspaper officials now are “building a timeline that lays out what pieces are going to go where and at what time,” he said.

The Californian’s preparations are so extensive because the Ferag equipment is so integrated.

The RollStream is the anchor of a postpress processing line that also includes a Ferag MultiSertDrum capable of inserting as many as 18 supplements at a time. Product sizes can be changed in fewer than two minutes, said Joseph Colletti, president of Ferag of Americas. A MultiDisk winding/unwinding system completes the package.

Colletti said other products involved in the mailroom conversion include an upgrade of the newspaper’s existing SCC gripper conveyor, a card gluing/application system, an insert verification system, stackers, conveyors, top sheet printers/applicators and other components.

Innovative paper

The Californian chose RollStream, which was first introduced at last year’s IfraExpo, after a lengthy vetting process that included a trip to Dusseldorf, Germany, where the system is being used by the Rheinische Post.

Managers also scrutinized the financial health and product base of potential candidates.

The final candidates were Ferag and GMA Inc. Ferguson said The Californian chose Ferag because its equipment was slightly faster than the GMA equipment and because RollStream “truly had the next generation of controls. We are going to be on the cutting edge — and a lot of newspapers don’t like to be on the cutting edge.”

The Californian is well known for its willingness to innovate. The same month the newspaper completed site planning its mailroom project, it switched its telephone network to one that sends voice traffic via the Internet. At the same time, it finished up a project in which GPS systems were installed in all its vehicles.

Californian officials expect the RollStream system to yield a wide variety of significant productivity improvements, Ferguson said.

Cutting ‘miss rates’

Among them is reducing “miss rates,” the percentage of newspapers that end up without inserts.

The Californian’s current miss rate is about 3 percent, close to the industry average. When the new mailroom is operational, Ferguson expects that rate to drop below 1 percent “for all our products, combined.”

The reduction in miss rates will also let The Californian eliminate over-runs it now produces to compensate for lost inserts, Ferguson said.

In addition to the increase in speed, Ferguson said The Californian will also gain benefits from RollStream’s tracking capabilities.

Barcodes printed on the top sheet of each processed bundle will enable the newspaper to track finished product each step along the way. Californian managers will know “what insert is in what paper, what paper is in what bundle and what bundle is in what truck,” Ferguson said.

That transparency will trickle down to the carrier level, rather than the current district level, making deliveries more accurate.

What does that mean to advertisers? “Today, advertisers can pick up one-third of this district, one-third of this district, and one-third of that district, the three that are near his grocery store,” Ferguson said. “For the same amount of money, he can buy down to the carrier route, a lot closer alignment with what he assesses as his customer base.”

Finally, the new mailroom will automate transport of printed product all the way from press to truck, eliminating The Californian’s current design in which papers now have to be manually placed on pallets before they’re loaded.