There’s no question that disposing waste is one of the biggest headaches newspaper production managers face.

That pain intensifies when a paper has a commercial printing operation. Waste from trimmers, stitchers and other postproduction equipment can quickly pile up if not properly managed.

KenBay’s Rotorpac compactor uses a patented design that allows it to continually compact waste. Newspapers are an emerging market for the firm.
Photo: KenBay Manufacturing

The Press Enterprise in Bloomsburg, Pa., a daily paper with a commercial printing subsidiary, said it solved part of its waste management problem when it purchased a Rotorpac compactor from KenBay Manufacturing, said Associate Publisher Paul Eyerly IV.

“Before we bought the unit, we had to dump trim waste into cardboard boxes and we would have employees stomp it down with their feet,” Eyerly said. The newspaper also uses the device to handle white waste caused by web breaks and roll remnants.

One commercial project, a 108-page book printed weekly by the Press Enterprise, reflects the value of the compactor, according to Julie Nietz, bindery/packaging department manager.

“Before adding the Rotorpac, three of my people would take several hours to crush the waste in large cardboard boxes,” she said.

“We would usually have some eight or 10 huge boxes of waste at the end of the day, which would then have to be hauled out for pickup.”

The Rotorpac, she said, eliminated the labor needed to crush the trash and also slashed the amount of waste from multiple huge boxes to a manageable bag or two of compacted paper. “We have reduced labor to no more than 30 minutes and reclaimed all of our floor space,” she said.

New target

Newspapers’ commercial printing operations are an emerging target market for KenBay, said Donald Meis, president of Mendham, N.J.-based KenBay LLC. Meis’ company has the exclusive North American rights to sell the Rotorpac.

“The newspaper industry is an industry of focus for us,” he said. KenBay has about 300 Rotorpacs installed at 150 companies, primarily manufacturers and distributors.

The Rotorpac employs a patented design that allows it to continually compact waste, Meis said. Prevailing designs used by other compactors require users to interrupt feeding while a ram compresses the trash. As a result of its design, the Rotorpac is particularly suited for operations such as stitching or trimming where waste is constantly generated.

“This device collects waste at the source,” Meis said, adding that internal cost studies indicate Rotorpac users can save more than $13,000 annually by eliminating the need to cart waste to trash bins.

Moreover, because the Rotorpac typically yields one compacted bag from what would ordinarily be six bags of trash, more compacted bags can be stuffed into a trash bin, thus requiring fewer pickups, he said.

Finally, Meis said, the compactor’s pallet-sized footprint means the device doesn’t take up valuable floor space.

In addition to reducing the amount of trash, Eyerly at the Press Enterprise said the device helps the company reach its recycling goals.