MediaNews Group Inc. and its Bay Area News Group unit are in the midst of a multiphased project that includes both a web-width reduction to 11.5-inch-wide pages and a migration to computer-to-plate.

Twenty-five MNG sites across the country — including the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News and Contra Costa (Calif.) Times — are shrinking their web widths to 46 inches and a number of them are also adopting thermal CTP, said Joe Boessenecker, production director for California Newspaper Partnership’s Bay Area News Group.

“We just completed our 17th web-width reduction start up (March 17), so we’re well on our way,” he said. Pressline Services Inc. is overseeing the web-width reductions on MNG’s doublewide presses while MNG crews are modifying the singlewide machines.

Doing both at once

All of MNG’s sites will be converted to 46 inches by July, Boessenecker said.

Doing both projects at once is a major undertaking for the publisher, but one that made sense.

“Our analysis determined that there were a number of sites where we could avoid the cost of converting existing film imaging and platemaking equipment — old technology — by springboarding straight into computer-to-plate, and we could realize additional cost savings.”

To that end, three sites so far have converted to various models of Kodak’s Trendsetter News thermal platesetters, and three more are slated to go live this month. The CTP conversions, Boessenecker explained, typically take place six to eight weeks ahead of the web reductions.

The St.  Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press, and MNG’s production facilities in San Bernardino, Calif., and in Valencia, Calif., converted to 46 inches and CTP in February, with each site ramping up two platesetters apiece.

The southern California sites were an oddity, Boessenecker said, because they had earlier planned to convert to CTP and cut their web widths to 48 inches.

“We quickly re-engineered the webs at those sites to go right down to 46,” he said.

The three facilities set to follow with CTP this month are the publisher’s Bay Area News Group sites — the Mercury News, as well as the BANG East Bay sites in Walnut Creek and Concord, Calif. Those sites will move to 46 inches in June.

Nela is supplying punch bending equipment for all of the sites.

Concord and Walnut Creek each house doublewide presses, and along with the Merc, make up “the lion’s share of our production here in the Bay Area,” Boessenecker said.

Boessenecker counts quality, cost savings, waste reduction and productivity improvements among the biggest benefits of the project.

“By sheer nature of imaging direct-to-plate, we can start looking at throughput periods from the time editorial releases the last page until the press actually starts, and we can shorten up on those time spans because we’re not handling film at all. Everything is automated,” he said. “You push the button and the page comes out as a plate.”