When News Publishing Co. Chief Operating Officer Otis Raybon reads headlines about mid-sized papers that plan to begin polywrapping their packages, you can forgive him for wondering what all the fuss is about.

That’s because the family-owned NPC, which prints the Rome (Ga.) News-Tribune (daily, 18,009; Sunday, 19,356) as well as 10 other area weekly newspapers, has been wrapping its inserts, weeklies, TMCs and selected Sunday completes since 1999. All told, NPC churns out more than 100,000 polybagged packages each week.





News Publishing Co. uses a postpress foundation that consists of Quipp Newstec inserters, Prism control software and Sitma polywrappers to produce more than 100,000 packages each week.
Photos: William Martin
 

“We were originally interested in the technology to support our concept of selective delivery,” he said, citing the publisher’s diverse market in western Georgia and eastern Alabama.

NPC anchored its postpress operation around a 12-station C80-750 wrapper from Sitma USA Inc. The off-line system can wrap upwards of 5,000 packages per hour.

 

Polybagging has gained steam over the last several months as papers such as The News Journal in Wilmington, Del., the Journal & Courier in Lafayette, Ind., and The News-Gazette in Champaign, Ill., retool their postproduction around wrapping machines. Major metros the Chicago Tribune, Washington Post and South Florida Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale also bag their Sunday inserts.

Variety key

NPC uses the system to package a variety of products, ranging from Sunday inserts in its flagship Rome News-Tribune to a twice-monthly TMC that’s built entirely on the Sitma wrapper and mailed to 50,000 households in an adjacent county. The Sunday News-Tribune insert package contains about 25 inserts, a total that jumps to more than 40 around the holidays, Raybon said.

The technology has enabled NPC to create a more attractive package that has won the attention of customers, non-customers and advertisers alike, Raybon said.

“We think (wrapping) has improved single-copy sales for point-of-purchase locations,” he said. “The inserts don’t fall out and consumers can see the entire package.”

Additionally, bagging gives NPC greater flexibility as it markets its various publications, he said. “The real value comes from database management,” he said. “We can build selective products and we gain efficiencies from our postpress operation.” NPC uses software from Publishing Business Systems to mesh its circulation and postproduction operations.

More than plastic

Still, Raybon said, publishers need to understand their own market before taking the polybagging plunge.

“You want to make sure that what you’re wrapping is strategic; you shouldn’t wrap products just for the case of wrapping. You want to have a strategic reason.”

NPC last year bolstered its mailroom, adding a 10:2 Newstec SLS-1000 inserter from Quipp Systems Inc. to replace legacy inserters.

The company uses Prism Inc.’s inserter control software to manage the inserter and Sitma machine.