Press vendors say 2007 will be a challenging year, but believe the North American newspaper market will remain strong as publishers upgrade their infrastructure in a bid to compete for commercial and other non-newspaper printing business.

“We think those orders that didn’t happen last year will happen in 2007 and that those publishers who have been deciding what they want to do will place an order this year,” said Vince Lapinski, MAN Roland’s newly appointed chief executive officer. “2006 wasn’t the strongest year. We think ‘07 will be a better year for the North American market.”


Vince Lapinski

Among expected projects: Transcontinental Inc., which is shopping for as many as five triple-wide presses to anchor a plant in northern California that will be used to print the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Naples (Fla.) Daily News, which is also looking for a new machine. Newspapers in north suburban Chicago, Cheyenne, Wyo., and northern Colorado are also reportedly eyeing new presses.

 

Niche markets

“We also feel strongly that with all the new technology available on a double-width press, such as variable web width, UV drying and other features, that these machines give newspapers the ability to print niche products that will help publishers break out of their traditional product and to connect to new readers,” Lapinski said. “There is no reason why a newspaper can’t incorporate some of the features” and reach out to tap new revenue streams, he said.

Pointing to publishers such as Quebecor Inc., which is installing hybrid heatset/coldset ColorMAN presses at a plant in Toronto to produce both directories and newspapers as an example of how companies need to stretch traditional boundaries, Lapinski said, “There has to be a new mindset among publishers that they have to have additional revenue streams. Those who are aggressive in the long-term will find themselves in a good place.”

MAN Roland is entering its first year as an independent company after being spun off by its parent. Lapinski, and newly minted vice president of newspaper sales Ron Sams, say they believe prospective customers won’t be scared off by the company’s new ownership structure.

“I think we’ve become the safe buy,” said Sams. “We will continue to invest in the necessary infrastructure to provide support to our customers and will continue to execute project with precision and care.”

“The more services and the more we can do to help our customers to perform their operations better, that’s our goal,” said Lapinski.

To that end, Lapinski said the company will continue to bolster its printnet services and support activities, rolling out applications such as Print Monitor, a benchmarking and best practices lifecycle management app.

“It’s an important piece of our overall strategy,” he said. “Services are critical for us.”

Significant activity

Gary Owen, director of marketing and newspaper sales at Koenig & Bauer AG, also believes 2007 will yield significant activity. The vendor last year commissioned presses encompassing 366 printing couples at five North American locations, including The Kansas City (Mo.) Star. At each of these sites, publishers are diversifying their printing to tap into new revenue streams. “We’re seeing that flexible production is the key,” Owen said. “Newspapers in Rockford (Ill.), Bristol (Va.) and Dover (Del.) are now taking printing to the next level in order to bring in more commercial revenues,” he said, citing in particular the Rockford Register Star, which signed commercial clients representing an additional $1 million in revenue in the first year after commissioning a Colora press; and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which picked up the USA Today contract (see related story, page 8).


Gary Owen

“We’re optimistic,” Owen said. “There are a number of nice-sized projects for everyone. I’m seeing a lot of pent-up activity.”

KBA will enter 2007 with a new press model, the Commander CT, which was introduced at IfraExpo in October. The compact version of its Commander pressline features improved roller-type inking units, ink keys and spray dampeners. An undisclosed German newspaper is testing it.

“There’s no question that publishers need flexibility,” Owen said. “They are looking at options such as automation, easier make-ready and variable web width. These are the types of technologies that have a quick payback and support the idea of custom publishing.”

KBA is also bolstering its service capabilities, offering such features as web-width reduction, something it’s performing at the Journal Sentinel. It is retooling its North American sales office, shuttering its York, Pa., facility and moving sales and services to its existing Williston, Vt., office. “There will be no change in service or commitment,” he said. “We’re just keeping the foot soldiers where they belong.” (KBA also announced it would open a new parts facility in Dallas this month.)

Single-wide vendor Web Press Corp. also has service and flexibility high on its feature list, according to Mark Ricca, executive vice president. The supplier has worked aggressively with customers to retrofit their machines with UV drying, he said. “We have more presses with UV producing nationally than any other company,” he said. “We’ll continue to commit a large port of R&D dollars to maintain our leading-edge status (in that area) since that is where the printing customer base has synergistically defined as the area where their biggest revenue will be generated in the next five to 10 years.”


Mark Ricca

Ricca said half of the complete presslines WPC has installed over the past few years sport components enabling publishers to use UV drying or to satisfy commercial printing requirements requiring sheeters or other features.

The key, said Greg Harabin, president and chief executive officer of TKS (USA), is adaptability. “The market is now looking for continued flexibility, thus allowing publishers to tap into changing revenue streams.” Features such as variable web width, stitching, custom folding and heatset printing are all components now being considered.


Greg Harabin

Case in point: TKS customer sites in Salt Lake City and Fort Wayne, Ind. In Salt Lake, where Newspaper Agency Corp. became the first newspaper in the world to install TKS’ 4-by-1 Color Top 5000 press technology, the publisher launched a Spanish-language publication and is beginning to woo additional commercial accounts.

Fort Wayne Newspapers, meantime, will be able to produce up to 48 pages of back-to-back color once its Color Top 7000 press goes on-edition later this year. That much color capacity will help the publisher tap into new markets, Harabin said.

 “Three to five years ago we wouldn’t be talking about that, and I believe this trend will continue as newspapers are under continuing economic pressures,” he said.

New spray technology on tap

As for TKS, Harabin said the company will continue to develop new products, such as closed-loop color controls and a spraybar dampening system, the first of which will be installed at in Fort Wayne.

It’s also planning to step up its material handling marketing and after-market services and support. Harabin said 2007 will also see the debut of TKS’ Color Top Century press, a 100,000-copy-an-hour machine that will go on-edition at Japanese publisher Kyoto Shimbun Co. Ltd. this spring. A 6-by-2 press, TKS’ first, will be commissioned in Lisbon, Portugal, this year.

The next year will bring evolutionary changes to the newly created Manugraph DGM Inc., formed in November following Manugraph India Ltd.’s purchase of Dauphin Graphic Machines.

“There are a lot of opportunities,” said Dave Moreland, the firm’s vice president of sales and marketing, adding that the combined company now has a single-width global market share approximating 50 percent.


Dave Moreland

“We have a lot of new R&D initiatives under way, and we have engineering resources that are truly staggering. Generally, we’ll be able to take advantage of each other’s technology.”

As such, Moreland said executives are “very optimistic” about the next 12 months. “We have a lot of projects we’re working on and we believe that business will be good,” citing demands by smaller newspapers and commercial contract printers for flexible, sophisticated single-width presses.

Spectrum of products

“There is a need to produce a spectrum of products, and they need a faster ROI, and those are goals well-suited to single-width presses,” Moreland said.

MDGM will also continue to manufacture the Americolor double-width tower, marketed by Inland Newspaper Machinery Corp.

Goss International Corp. also is sanguine about its 2007 prospects, said Bob Brown chief executive officer. “In today’s universe, you have to be optimistic,” he said. The vendor had a profitable 2006, with $1.1 billion in revenues that included the first two sales of its 2-year-old Flexible Press System press and some major postpress projects (see related story, page 3).


Bob Brown

“We firmly believe in press platforms that are flexible,” he said.

Equally important, 2006 saw the first sale of a Goss double-width press to a North American newspaper since 2001 when the vendor sold a Colorliner press to The New York Times (see sidebar).

The deal was a coup for Goss, and Brown expects the momentum will continue.

“If we are not back, we never will be back,” he said about the significance of the transaction, which includes Goss retrofitting The Times’ other Goss presses to 48 inches.

“It was a hard-fought battle, and the sale was a positive development and we thank them for it. But it also speaks to the strength of the Colorliner product line and it speaks to our ability to work with The Times and meet their needs,” Brown said.

“Our focus has been to support those areas that give the most value to the end-user and we will continue to invest in that part of the organization,” Brown said, citing waste reduction and color quality as customer demands. “We also have an internal commitment to improve our after-market and lifetime support to help keep our customers competitive, to make sure their investment sustains itself.” Those types of services, ranging from web-width reductions to adding features allowing publishers to print commercially, will be ramped up in 2007, Brown said.

Partnership

“If we can be a partner for improving operational capabilities, whether it’s towers, retooling or talking about how to produce commercial type products on a newspaper platform, all these are things we can bring to the table now.”

Don Gustafson, president of Tensor Group Inc., said his company “had an unbelievably strong year” in 2006, fueled primarily by commercial and overseas sales.

 

Don Gustafson

“We are seeing a fair amount of activity in ‘07,” he said, from newspapers and contract printers that want to focus on niche publications and shorter-run jobs. “From our perspective, customers that want a smaller single-wide press, we’ll definitely be involved with that,” he said.

The company upgraded its product line, formally debuting the T-500 machine that offers a 50,000-copy-per-hour rating and three ink form rollers to ensure proper ink coverage. It’s engineered to meet the needs of users that print commercially and want to add such features as UV drying, Gustafson said. “We had a strong showing of the machine at Graph Expo and we are seeing a lot more customers interested in UV and heatset.

“We have a niche to exploit,” Gustafson said about the family owned vendor. “We can provide the service customers need and we’re not going to change what we’re doing.”

Migration support

At WIFAG, Director of Sales Noel McEvoy said the supplier’s ability to support newspapers as they adopt new technologies such as computer-to-press will remain one of its strong points.

To that end, the vendor is testing a closed-loop ink density control that will be available later this year and is opening up its press control software to permit servicing and remote diagnosis.

 “Printers and publishers are seeking investment security, and that means presses must be upgradeable as technology arrives on the market,” he said.

WIFAG’s most recent U.S. customer, North Jersey Media Group, which last year commissioned an evolution 371 press at its Rockaway, N.J., plant, typifies what publishers are demanding, McEvoy said. The press has four computer-to-press imaging units which the publisher is testing as it evaluates future publishing options.

“We’re positive about the market,” he said. “Publishers are not passive in the face of new technological challenges such as the Web. We think that the Internet will be complementary and that the printed newspaper has a bright future and will continue to be a money-maker.”

Trimming waste

Peter Griffin, president of Essex Products Group, said papers are also looking for suppliers to bolster their legacy presses, adding such components as automatic ink presetting to reduce waste and improve quality.

Cutting waste “is money that can go directly to the bottom line. The payback is usually within a year, and once publishers realize that,” they are interested in upgrading their presses.

In addition to retrofitting older machines, EPG sells its presetting equipment to Tensor, WPC and Global Press Systems, as an OEM supplier. All three of the press vendors target the commercial and newspaper market.

“A lot of our customers are interested in getting into commercial printing and hybrid production. One of the features of our equipment is that publishers can handle multiple paper types, and as you preset your system, it can emulate what you’re doing.”