KANSAS CITY, Mo. - The Kansas City Star this month will begin producing complete papers at its $199 million downtown plant, capping off a four-year project that included bankruptcies, vandalism and the sale of the venerable daily to a new owner.

Those downsides notwithstanding, The Star is ready to celebrate its landmark achievement in style, said Randy Waters, vice president of production. One of the ways it plans to do so is to deliver a copy of the new Star, sporting more color pages and more vivid printing in a slimmer and trimmer package, to every household in the Kansas City market - a bump of 375,000 copies over the typical daily production run of 280,000 copies.



The Kansas City (Mo.) Star’s new Koenig & Bauer AG presses are prominently displayed in the paper’s new $199 million home downtown. The plant, an ultra-modern glass-paneled facility, occupies two blocks northeast of The Star’s Grand Boulevard headquarters.
Photo: Aaron Leimkuehler

Reflection of commitment

“Launches are always stressful,” he said in a late April interview with Newspapers & Technology. “But we have the task of making sure every household in the Kansas City market receives a newspaper.”

The Star planned to split the job in two, delivering the June 5 edition to half the market and the June 6 edition to the remaining households.

That the paper is offering to reach out to the entire market as part of the production plant’s official opening is a reflection of what the 424,000-square-foot facility represents to the community.

When Knight Ridder executives announced they would construct the plant in downtown Kansas City in 2002, they hailed the investment as evidence of their support for the newspaper and the core city. Although Knight Ridder will no longer own the paper once its sale to McClatchy Co. closes this summer, the commitment to the city remains, Waters said.

Three bridges connect the two Koenig & Bauer AG presslines that
will be used to print The Star. 




Conveyors from Glunz & Jensen K&F in Star’s
prepress department.
Photos: Newspapers & Technology
 

And the finished product doesn’t disappoint. The ultra-modern glass-paneled facility, designed by The Austin Co., occupies two city blocks northeast of The Star’s Grand Boulevard headquarters.

The multilevel building rises from four stories on the south end to eight stories on the north end, where two Koenig & Bauer AG Commander presslines reside. The press hall was engineered to give downtown passers-by and highway drivers the opportunity to see the machines in action.

Bumpy journey

While the final outcome is impressive, the journey to completion was not without its problems. Austin couldn’t finish the project it designed, filing for bankruptcy in October 2005, leaving The Star liable for millions of dollars in bills to contractors that Austin hadn’t paid.

To ensure proper temperature and humidity in the press hall, 
The Star’s plant is equipped with four 875-ton chillers.
The temperature can’t vary by more than 2 percent.
 

The bulk of the engineers and designers who had overseen the project moved to another engineering firm, Kansas City-based Burns & McDonnell, which ultimately finished the job.

In spring 2004, construction of the plant was all but halted for almost two months when subcontractor Havens Steel Co. filed for bankruptcy, leaving 700 tons of steel The Star had already paid for behind Havens’ locked gates.

Then, vandals broke 47 of the plant’s blue-glass windows last fall, adding thousands of additional dollars to the final bill.

Finally, the plant’s opening was delayed when Knight Ridder decided to reduce the Commanders’ 50-inch web width to 48 inches, pushing back the opening by another several weeks.

Pleased with project

The challenges notwithstanding, Waters said he’s pleased with the project.

“Almost everything is meeting our expectations,” he said. (See Waters interview below.)

The centerpiece of the new plant is twin KBA Commander presslines, each sporting two presses encompassing 216 couples, 36 towers, 40 Pastostar RC automatic reelstands and four folders: two KF 5 2:5:5 double-jaw folders and two KF 5 2:5:5 single-jaw folders that can be expanded if need be.

They’ll replace 40-year-old Hoe letterpresses that required Star machinists to engineer replacement parts on-site and dictated that newsprint be hauled to reelstands on a dolly.

The new press’  H-type four-high towers sit on a concrete table and are equipped with KBA Drivetronic drive systems that include a Bosch Rexroth (Indramat) AC motor and controller per printing couple.

An Oxy-Dry blanket washing system and a technotrans spraybar dampening system round out the press.

EAE Ltd. provided the control consoles, which also feature automatic cutoff register and web-tension controls. The press is also equipped with KBA’s Webtronic self-adjusting system that funnels ink, water and other press presets to the machines.

Immediate boost

The Star’s readers and advertisers will see an immediate boost in color and print quality, Waters said, with the Commanders boasting the capacity to print up to 40 pages in 4-color and 16 pages with spot-color in an 80-page production run. Seventy-two-page production runs, meantime, can include as many as 48 4-color pages, Waters said. That’s almost four times more color than the Hoe machines could generate.

In addition, The Star equipped two of the presses with a movable KBA online stitching system. The stitching system operates at press speeds and produces the newspaper’s television book.

Prepress beefed up

On the prepress side, five lines of Glunz & Jensen K&F Inc. ProVision Alliance benders and conveyor system anchor the plate production room, which also features four Advantage violet computer-to-plate units from Agfa.

Glunz & Jensen K&F’s pre- and post-bend conveyors, including a vertical post-bend conveyor system, deliver plates as needed.

Ferag supplied postpress conveyors and UTR gripper conveyors, which stretch in some cases to more than 1 mile in length before ending in 24 stacker positions.

Automate postpress

The Star’s 80,000-square-foot mailroom is built around four GMA Inc. 30:2 SLS-3000 inserters, 88 hopper loaders and the firm’s SAM production software. Schur Packaging Systems, meantime, installed eight Winrob palletizers to handle the transport of finished products.

The paper is also using stackers from Quipp Systems Inc. and NP 5000 strapping machines from Dynaric Inc.

To handle zoned distribution, The Star invested in four Kodak Versamark DS5120 digital printers to manage TMC addressing and labeling. Waters said The Star sometimes ships out as many as 300 zoned editions to accommodate advertiser demands.

Inserts will be stored in a 5,300-position high-bay automated storage and retrieval system developed by HK Systems. The ASRS will house both inserts and newsprint. HK also engineered a day-storage ASRS at the base of the Commander presslines.
 

With project near end, production veep Waters takes look back at what worked - and what didn’t KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Just weeks before The Kansas City Star flipped the switch on its new production facility, Newspapers & Technology Publisher Mary L. Van Meter interviewed Kansas City Star Vice President of Production Randy Waters to get his impression of the project and the technology supporting it.   Randy Waters Vice President, Production The Kansas City Star     On what he would have done differently at the plant, given today’s economic challenges: Waters: We started planning the new facility more than four years ago and developed a strategy and product plan. However, with the rapid changes going in our market, only 50 percent of the plan held true. Over time, the expectations for color, zoning requirements and insert volume have all increased. [To accommodate that growth] we might have moved closer to collating knowing what we know now. Newspaper production plants need to maximize flexibility. When we negotiated for a press purchase we talked about flexibility - we ordered the press at 50-inch and KBA also drilled for a 48-inch while the press was at the factory before it was shipped to us. Before we even had the second press commissioned, we converted to a 48-inch web. Going back and converting the press from a 50-inch to a 48-inch web before the presses started caused the some minor delays. In addition, we lost eight weeks of construction time due to the bankruptcy of our steel supplier.   On the technology that has exceeded his expectations: Waters: Overall we are very pleased, especially with the press start-up in general. Almost everything is meeting our expectations. There are always challenges in integration and we have had some trouble in getting [some] equipment to communicate and interface. We’re glad we selected heavy-duty bearer presses due to our high number of impressions. We’re pleased that we designed front, center and back bridges between the presses. This increased the flow between the presses. We started training for this new offset press more than five years ago. [To prepare], we started placing (training and Sinapse Graphic International simulation) computers in the break areas. We then began to conduct formal training classes to get our people more computer literate. Our folks were excited to get to the new computer equipment. We also asked our vendors to come in for on-site training. We estimated that we spent over $3 million in training, some of which was subsidized by Missouri state reimbursement programs.   On what he’s learned about the new plant: Waters: We learned that we needed to be prepared for vandalism. Forty-seven of our glass panels had to be replaced due to paintball pellets, slingshots, etc. There is a coating that we can put on the inside of the windows but it is very expensive.  Bulletproof windows are also very expensive and add extra weight and thus could not be used with this building design. We learned to be climate and humidity experts with the large amount of glass [surrounding the press hall]. Because of the glass, we have the additional cost associated with exchanging the proper volume of air to keep the temperature constant. The air temperature can vary no more than 2 percent to ensure optimal press performance. The facility has 39 air handling units and four 875-ton chillers. That added a lot of expense to the project. We also have a backup generator for disaster planning. Finally, our building is landlocked and we have to truck in the newsprint from our offsite storage building. We outsourced [this task] to a [third-party] warehouse company. By outsourcing the newsprint [handling and transport], we face a greater potential that the newsprint will be damaged.   On his thoughts about the future of the industry: Waters: Change is happening at a faster rate than I’ve ever seen in my career. One trend that concerns me is how to ensure delivery quality at a time where insert orders are increasing at a 5 percent per month rate. Pages are going down and unique products are going up. Some insert products are coming in below equipment specifications, particularly some single-sheet products. One of our challenges is to have the expertise available to keep all the equipment running and operating. To help us meet that challenge, we established a new production IT department to help meet these challenges. We also need to find a bridge between what the advertising department sells and the capabilities within our zoning equipment and personnel. It’s getting more difficult for carriers, because they have multiple products and multiple zones. As a final point, we need to understand how to maximize the equipment we now have to meet the market’s needs and demands.