Quebecor Media Inc. is adding heatset drying and more color towers to its Toronto and Montreal production plants.

The vendor is adding Megtec dual dryers to its existing MAN Roland Inc. ColorMAN presses in a project that will be completed next year.

In addition, QMI is installing an additional eight MAN Roland ColorMAN towers — five in Toronto and three in Montreal — to satisfy paging demands.

Photo: MAN Roland
Part of the MAN Roland ColorMAN press at QMI’s Toronto facility.
 

QMI in 2005 said it would spend almost $200 million to construct print plants to produce newspapers including Le Journal de Montreal, the Toronto Sun, the London Free Press and commercial products.

The facilities also print directories as part of a long-term, $900 million contract to produce the  Yellow Book.

Each plant is now anchored by a ColorMAN pressline configured as 10 towers with 15 reelstands and three jaw-type folders. The presses have the capacity to print up to 128 4-color pages in a 128-page edition or up to 96 4-color and 64 2-color pages in a 160-page edition.

The Megtec dryers will be installed on two towers in Toronto and four in Montreal, and permit QMI to woo additional commercial printing accounts. The heatset-equipped towers will be engineered to print coldset as needed. MAN Roland will oversee the installation of the towers and heatset dryers under terms of the contract.

Nolin Richard, QMI’s vice president of production, said the expansion project will allow the publisher to fully exploit its technological foundation. “Our vision from the beginning planning phase is to build a printing facility that would be fully utilized nearly 24 hours a day and deliver a lower cost to print on a very flexible printing platform,” he said.