DINNINGTON, United Kingdom — Johnston Press plc is one of the three largest newspaper publishers in the United Kingdom. It prints more than 300 different titles, which are produced in 12 regional print centers managed centrally by the group’s printing division. In addition to its own titles, Johnston also prints papers for News International, Express Newspapers, EMAP, The Guardian and the Financial Times.

Johnston Printing most recently invested more than $217 million to construct a new plant in Dinnington, which went into operation last year, and to add printing capacity to its existing facility in Portsmouth. Each site is anchored by a MAN Roland Inc. ColorMAN XXL 6-by-2 press that will be used to produce papers for NI under terms of a 15-year agreement.

...producing 24 tabloid pages in a single footprint was appealing. David Crow Divisional Managing director, Johnston Printing

The machines, which represent JP’s first use of the six-wide format, join doublewide and singlewide presses from Goss International Corp. and Koenig & Bauer AG already in operation at the publisher’s other sites.

David Crow, divisional managing director for Johnston Printing, oversees the strategic and daily printing operations for the group. Here, he sits down to talk to Newspapers & Technology Publisher Mary L., Van Meter to update the progress of JP’s first triplewide press installation and to discuss the printer’s operational philosophy.

On how the new press project in Dinnington got started:

Crow: JP needed a new press at Dinnington for all the reasons most people need new presses — to add more color and to establish later deadlines. We also needed to move outside the city center. We have approximately 90 printing jobs per week in our Yorkshire region.

We had been looking at doublewide presses and had been a contract printer for News International for over five years. In discussions with NI, they suggested we investigate triplewide presses. In order to offset the extra investment needed for a triplewide press, NI offered JP an extended printing contract.

JP then explored a triplewide site with Koenig & Bauer and then we visited a MAN Roland XXL site in Pinneberg, Germany.

JP has numerous short run titles with big pagination (25,000 to 30,000 copies on average) whereas NI printing consists of long runs (400,000 to 550,000 copies). This type of printing brings many challenges, such as multiple starts and stops involving short printing windows.

We were not looking for state-of-the-art new printing technology (as with the triplewide for newspapers). While triplewide presses have been used extensively in commercial operations, they are not as prevalent in newspaper operations.

To that end, we were uncertain about waste and efficiencies; however, producing 24 tabloid pages in a single footprint was appealing. That meant faster makeready and (larger) labor cost savings.

On how well the first triplewide has performed.

Crow: It has been a steep learning curve, especially with the handling and operations of the triplewide blankets. The press uses a proven 2:5:5 jaw folder, and of course the ColorMAN press itself was also proven. But the industry has less experience overall with the ColorMAN triplewide.

That said, we’ve had to train our engineers to be printers. We run the press at 86,000 copies per hour and net over 70,000 depending on the products. Our challenge is pushing the consumable technology. We are currently working with vendors to correct some of the challenges we are experiencing, such as ink misting and web breaks.

Our major challenge has been with the metal back blankets. We have a large amount of web breaks or web wraps and as a result, have lost many expensive blankets.

It is very time consuming for the operation. Those metal back blankets are three to four times the cost of an average blanket.

We had to train our staff on the workings and handling of the blankets. Web breaks can happen for a variety of reasons, such as stops and starts, paper, blanket washing and other variables.

We are still researching options. The blankets do produce a better dot with less gain and allow us to produce commercial type quality products. We visibly inspect the blankets every week and are now aware of the special handling needs.

We switched from 45-gram weight paper to lighter weight 42.5-gram weight paper. Because of the metal back blankets we now need less ink, which has decreased the amount of show through.

On what JP would have done differently:

Crow: We could have used more experience on metal back blankets.

On the ability of postpress to keep up with the high-speed triplewide presses:

Crow: We don’t stop the presses for the mailroom and we have 24 tabloid newspapers per second coming out of each folder at full press speeds.

The production of 120-page papers at 86,000 copies per hour from each folder has pushed the envelope of the forwarding station, gripper line and stackers. So far, both Muller Martini and Ferag are meeting the challenge with their latest mailroom equipment at Dinnington and Portsmouth. The paper reels weigh in excess of 2 tons and therefore a robust automated roll handling system is required. The 12-unit press at Dinnington is supplied by two MAN robots, collecting rolls from a semi-automated preparation station, storing them in a simple buffer area and delivering them to the reelstands.

The width of the reels has also led to the development of a new carbon fiber composite core, which is stronger than the standard cardboard core, thus giving stable splices at high speed.

These cores are sent back to the paper mills for re-use, eliminating the need to dispose of the old standard core.

On how JP ensures consistency and quality over multiple press sites and multiple titles:

Crow: JP employs a very flat management structure, empowering local management to take responsibility for quality on their own particular mix of machinery and publisher requirements.

It is rare that one product is printed at more than one site. However, we are always looking to improve our benchmarking and adopting good practice from one site across the entire country. All major sites employ soft proofing, Ifra density standards, and densitometry. All consumables are vetted centrally and kept to a limited number of suppliers. Web width, paper weights and page sizes are standardized across the group to allow easy movement of titles from one site to another at short notice.

On how JP has employed automation at its sites:

Crow: Automation is constantly being applied all along the production process. In prepress, JP now employs common platforms for both editorial and advertising generation, as well as for newspaper sales data across its numerous publishing centers.

Computer-to-plate technology is used at all sites, as is automatic ink pre-setting. Most sites benefit from automatic web-up, registration control, remote press management and inserting. Our new installation introduced semi-automatic plating and de-plating, robotic reel handling, insert buffering and automated bundle palletizing. On-press multisection stitching, with online trimming. is also becoming more widespread.

On what areas JP will be investing in the next three to five years:

Crow: Existing JP plants are virtually all full-color with full inserting facilities. We will continue to support this. A lot of our old press technology has been replaced over the last five years so there will not be a great deal of upgrading required in the next five years.

We have also invested heavily in digitizing our workflow and standardizing our paging, letting us print any job at any site.

Although we cannot currently justify a payback on closed-loop densitometry, this technology and others like it are being monitored.

On managing labor expenses:

Crow: The introduction of new technology has allowed us to close smaller, less efficient sites and in general to employ fewer staff to produce greater quantity, specifically in Dinnington.

On ensuring your Portsmouth press project stays on schedule and on budget and the challenges JP faces with this project:

Crow: Portsmouth is on target for production and start-up (in June 2007). Project is on cost target. The benefits of learning from our Dinnington experience are expected to show through at Portsmouth. Having two sites will enable us to benchmark supplier and set key performance indicators of both operations.