By Charlotte Janischewski
Special to Newspapers & Technology

Editor’s note: Newspapers are making tougher demands on press vendors, but suppliers are taking steps to improve their technology. In this edited article, newspaper techniques covers the trends press vendors are facing.

Newspaper printing emerged from the technological doldrums a few years ago with a genuine wave of innovations - and has not stopped since. Among the catchwords in this respect are compact design, 4-by-1 and 6-by-2 configurations and waterless offset. Additionally, closed-loop control, semi-commercial applications, automatic plate changing and computer-to-press have also made varying impacts.

At last year’s IfraExpo, press vendors continued to exploit their market niches. Case in point: Italian vendor Cerutti, which re-emerged in Amsterdam after a 9-year absence from the convention.

Encouraged by a major order from the Daily Mail and General Trust in London, Cerutti showcased its flexographic technology at the show.

Koenig & Bauer, meantime, introduced its Commander CT, a compact web-offset version of its Cortina waterless press. KBA said it sold its ninth Cortina since the machine was introduced five years ago, to Elbo Avistryk AS in Denmark.

To Manfred Werfel, Ifra’s research director and deputy chief executive officer, IfraExpo reflected four key trends among press vendors: automation, simpler job changeover, integrated control from prepress to printing and finishing, and semi-commercial applications.

Press sales grabbed their own spotlight. Goss International Corp. unveiled the sale of its first two Flexible Press System presses (see Newspapers & Technology, November 2006), and MAN Roland announced the sale of two ColorMAN presses to the Times of India.

WIFAG meantime, sold presses to publishers in Spain and the Ukraine while Solna Web sold a machine to a Chinese newspaper. Web Press Corp.’s international unit, Web Leader, sold a Quad-Stack to a publisher in Northern Ireland.

Automate and network processes

All efforts toward attaining industrial newspaper production - the objective in the industry for years but as yet unachieved - must eventually include integrated process control.

The automation of individual process steps is a prerequisite for this, but it is also clear that production cannot be described as being industrial as long as the processes are not connected. Networking is important and is becoming increasingly so with the trend toward distributing newspaper production among several printing locations.

To that end, MAN Roland presented the latest printnet developments on its stand while ABB displayed a new version of its MP5 Cockpit press control software.

Even if the “investment backlog” is slowly being released, as some industry insiders claim, newspapers remain cost-conscious.

Efficiency, therefore, continues to be the top priority in new investments.

Closed-loop is the magic word in relation to automatic register controls and all major press manufacturers (as well as manufacturers of control software) are focusing on it intensively. Whereas color and cutoff register are comparatively simple to manage, image data-based color density control (without marks) has so far presented a technological challenge.

Automation will also help make press changeover as simple and fast as possible, even if everyone does not take the same approach. Thus, semi- or fully-automatic plate changing (for example, PlateTronic from KBA, PPL from MAN Roland, semi-automatic plate change systems from Goss) represents one of the possible answers. But inline plate imaging, such as the system developed by WIFAG for its evolution presses, also aims to achieve the same goal.

Added value

At the heart of any consideration of semi-commercial or hybrid printing (the combination of coldset and heatset) will be the aspect of added value.

A hybrid press that combines coldset and heatset is already in operation by Austrian publisher Fellner Medien. De Persgroep in Belgium is also testing the production of heatset publications. The Dijkman Offset contract printing plant in Diemen, near Amsterdam, also prints semi-commercial jobs, using a KBA Cortina press.

Speed also caught the attention of IfraExpo delegates. TKS set the stage with the announcement of its 100,000-copy-per-hour ColorTop Century press. Other vendors, however, aren’t likely to follow.

At MAN Roland, “The speed of about 90,000 copies” supported by the firm’s ColorMAN presses, “does not at present need to be increased,” said Anton Hamm, executive vice president of MAN Roland’s newspaper production systems.

KBA Marketing Director Klaus Schmidt said he sees “more important topics and more interesting tasks” than increasing the speed from 90,000 to 100,000 copies per hour.

“Higher speeds are desirable in some applications,” said Goss Chief Executive Officer Bob Brown, “but in most markets, we find publishers are more focused on net throughput, efficiency, versatility and reliability.”

These articles were first published in newspaper techniques, the monthly magazine of Ifra. If you have any comments or questions about these articles, please send them to ntreader@ifra.com.To learn more about the training and consulting services available to newspapers through Ifra’s joint venture with the Newspaper Association of America, please contact Technical Solutions LLC at info@technical-solutions.org.