Transcontinental Inc. said it will equip its forthcoming northern California newspaper production plant with postpress equipment from Ferag and Goss International Corp.

Ferag is overseeing installation of the equipment, which includes three UTR press gripper conveyors, five DiscPool buffering systems, five MultiSert inserting drums with RollStream (12:1 capacity), 40 JetFeeders, 10 MultiStack stackers and 20 SmartStrap strappers.

Goss is supplying two 30:2 Magnapak inserters, which will be integrated into the workflow, Ferag said.

Transcon is in the process of designing the plant, which will print the San Francisco Chronicle under terms of a long-term agreement between the printer and Hearst Corp.

MediaNews Group Inc. expects sales from its online efforts to triple in the next five years, putting into place a foundation robust enough to drive the publisher’s future operations. MNG is projecting its online revenues will contribute 20 percent of its annual sales by 2012, up from only 7 percent now, according to MNG Chief Executive Officer William Dean Singleton.

MNG, which owns more than 50 papers including The Denver Post, San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News and Detroit News, currently generates 89 percent of its total revenue from print advertising and 4 percent from niche products such as specialty publications, he said. By 2012, Singleton expects print advertising revenues to drop to 68 percent of the company’s total sales while online grows to 20 percent and niche products increases to 12 percent. In operating cash flow, MNG expects to generate 40 percent from print, 50 percent from online and 10 percent from niche within five years.

News International flipped the switch on the second of three new U.K. production sites. The publisher’s Liverpool-area facility, with five MAN Roland ColorMAN XXL presses, joins a refurbished plant in Glasgow, Scotland, which opened in April. The last site, outside of London, is under construction (see Newspapers & Technology, July 2007).

The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch is the first North American paper to install a gripper conveyor manufactured by Kaneda Kikai Seisakusho, a sister company of press vendor TKS. It will be in production by fall 2008, said Del Varney, vice president of operations. The conveyor will join a KKS automatic stripping station The Dispatch put into operation in 2006.

The Times of India is purchasing inserting, packaging and conveying systems from Ferag for facilities in Mumbai, Sahibabad and Chennai. The contract is the biggest ever to be awarded by an Indian newspaper for postpress technology, Ferag said.

USA Today and Tribune Media Services teamed up to distribute a weekly edition of USA Today outside the United States. USA Today is producing the eight-page, English-language, broadsheet section and TMS is syndicating it to publishers abroad for use as a supplement to their daily newspapers.

Aragon System Products said it completed inserter control upgrades at The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, Charleston (S.C.) Post and Courier, Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J. the Post-Standard in Syracuse, N.Y., the Boston Globe and Dow Jones’ production sites in Palo Alto, Calif., and LaGrange, Ga.

One year ago

Goss international notches its first two sales of its Flexible Press System presses, to Irish publisher Independent News & Media and Netherlands-based printer F.D. Hoekstra Boom.

Five years ago

The Kansas City (Mo.) Star signs a letter of intent to purchase two Koenig & Bauer AG Commander presslines for its planned $199 million downtown Kansas City plant.

10 years ago

News International picks Unisys Corp. to supply it with a 1,200-seat editorial front-end system.

15 years ago

Mitsubishi shows off its new North American headquarters in suburban Chicago.