The State in Columbia, S.C., in September reduced its web width from 50 to 48 inches on its three doublewide Headliner presses from Goss International Corp. As part of the project, The State (daily, 104,880; Sunday, 138,980) installed press lockups and three new benders from Acutech LLC.

“The project took two months of extensive work between Pressline Services, who did the web-width reduction, and Acutech, but it was something we had been planning all along,” said Tony Adeshina, the paper’s vice president of operations.



The State installed vision bending equipment and press lockups
from Acutech in September.
Photo: Acutech

The State images film on Autologic 3850 imagesetters. In addition to its daily, The State prints an edition of USA Today.

 

“Since we installed the lockups and the benders, registration has improved consistently,” Adeshina said. “We installed vision benders and we used to use semi-automatic vendors. From a user standpoint, since the installation of the bender, we’ve seen a great improvement in our registration systems.”

The State reduced its web width in a bid for increased efficiency, Adeshina said, and the newspaper’s next step will likely be converting to computer-to-plate.

“We are planning to go to CTP in the near future,” Adeshina said. “We are talking to vendors right now.”