Even as newspapers’ capital budgets for new postpress equipment plateau, publishers are increasing the amount of money they’re spending for reconditioned and remanufactured equipment.

Case in point: The East Valley Tribune in suburban Phoenix, which recently upgraded five legacy Muller Martini Mailroom Systems Inc. SLS-1000 inserters with new software controls from Miracom Computer Corp.

“We had an old (Lincs) system that could no longer support our demands,” said Vince Roquemore, the Tribune’s director of product packaging. With the MiraSert and MiraGroup software now deployed, Roquemore said he’s been able to automate many processes and improve tracking.

Photo: Quipp
Quipp Systems Inc. has been modifying its stackers with powered outfeed rollers to accommodate bundles whose dimensions have been trimmed as a result of a web width reduction.

“We were doing a lot of reports by hand and now we can get performance reports digitally,” he said. The software also lets the Tribune link its inserters to its Publishing Business Systems’ circulation app. “Everything is now automated,” Roquemore said.

The software upgrade came after the Tribune rebuilt the inserters’ feeder heads in a three-year project. All told, the reconditioned equipment will let the Tribune meet postpress demands well into the next decade, Roquemore said, and at a much lower cost than buying new.

Miracom director Bill Harley said the Tribune installation is just one of many upgrades the firm oversaw last year, leading the New York-based company to record its best-ever year (see sidebar).

Last area

 “The packaging center has been the last area of the newspaper to be upgraded, and now newspapers are paying attention,” he said. “There is a lot more interest and even if newspapers buy new equipment for their mailroom, they still want to and need to upgrade controls in their older equipment.”

Another software developer, Aragon System Products, sold various inserter and conveyor control upgrades to a number of newspapers last year, including The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, The Boston Globe and Charleston (S.C.) Post and Courier, said Ronald Giancoli, director of sales and marketing.

“We have more than 60 proposals from newspapers that want to upgrade their systems,” he said. “It comes down to cost. If the equipment is decent, then refurbishment is an attractive option.”

One East Coast daily saved more than $25 million by upgrading its mailroom’s conveyors and other postpress systems with Aragon controls rather than buying new, he said, illustrating the potential cost-savings.

Another major publisher is switching out its obsolete postpress control system at multiple sites and replacing it with Aragon software. Once the transition is complete, the publisher will be able to get the monitoring capabilities it needs without having to purchase new distribution equipment, Giancoli said.

“There is a lot of equipment out there with obsolete controls and components,” he said.

“The new controls offer better management and give newspapers more tracking and accountability,” he said.

Getting more accountability was a major reason The Post-Standard in Syracuse, N.Y., tapped Aragon to replace obsolete controls governing two Ferag drum inserters, said Patti McAluney, production director.

“Mechanically, they were in good shape,” McAluney said of the 23-year-old inserters, “but operationally the components were not supported and it was getting more and more difficult to get replacements. With the Aragon software we are now getting increased functionality for reporting and monitoring.

“We hope we can get another five years’ use out of the equipment,” she said.

Tweaking the old

The Post-Standard and Tribune are just two of a growing number of papers examining how they can pump new life into older postpress equipment. In some cases, the system’s mechanical components still work but the equipment requires new software and other components to make it compatible with other systems. In other cases, the reconditioning is more comprehensive, and both software and hardware are replaced.

Reconditioned equipment vendors such as Joe Scott & Associates and Specialty Equipment Services Inc. say business is booming.

JSA, for example, is in the midst of a $4 million expansion that will double its manufacturing space, said Carl Toth, director of newspaper sales.

“We see a bright future for this type of business,” he said. “Newspapers are looking for retrofit and refurbished machines. Bigger papers want equipment to handle niche products while smaller papers are looking to upgrade their current equipment with automation.”

One other contributing factor: commercial printing, which is fueling the purchase of rebuilt stackers, stitcher/trimmers and other commercial equipment.

SES, meantime, touts its inventory of workhorse Muller Martini 227 inserters as well as other postpress equipment that includes retrofit stackers, conveyors and other equipment.

Among companies purchasing rebuilt equipment and software controls from SES are newspapers such as The (Santa Fe) New Mexican and printers such as Signature Offset.

Vendors that sell both new and reconditioned equipment are also seeing more interest from newspapers in used systems.

Remanufactured systems, in conjunction with sales of its new Titan inserters, contributed to a 20 percent boost in revenues for K&M Newspaper Services in 2007, said Rick Walter, vice president of sales.

“We had a good balance between the two, but demand for remanufactured systems are growing. With the economics in the market being the way they are, remanufactured equipment offers good values.”

Thinner webs fueling modifications

K&M, along with other postpress vendors is seeing business accelerated by the growth in web-width reductions.

Papers, Walter said, are ordering a wide variety of parts, from pockets to other components, which will enable them to process papers boasting widths as narrow as 42 inches. “We have to stay ahead of the curve,” he said.

“Our shop is running full-bore building parts for new and existing equipment,” Walter said. Last year, K&M further bolstered the shop’s capabilities by purchasing additional computer-numerical-control tooling systems to oversee part design and development.

At Quipp Systems Inc., web reduction requests spurred the vendor to create a series of modification kits for both its stackers and inserters, said Marketing Manager Leticia Gostisa,

Stacker kits are now being engineered for 44-inch-wide webs, she said, and associated pockets will be available later this spring.

Newscom deployments also grew, Gostisa said, with Quipp upgrading the inserter control software at 17 sites last year. It also developed software that lets users add functionality to legacy model 300 and 301 stackers so that they’re compatible with 500 series stackers. “Many of the components for the old stackers are either hard to find or very expensive. The upgrade kit lets papers protect their investments,” she said.

“Our core business remains new equipment but there is an escalating demand for reconditioned equipment so we need to address their demands as well,” she said.

Old and new

And some customers, such as The New York Times, ordered a mix of new and re-engineered machines. The paper purchased 12 new 500 stackers and 12 new Viper wrappers last year but also asked Quipp to recondition 35 existing Model 350 stackers and 35 Cobra wrappers.

“We believe our new equipment sales will still outweigh reconditioned systems, but with ROIs being what they are, some papers want a choice,” she said.

Barry Evans, executive vice president at WRH Marketing Americas, Ferag’s U.S.-based marketing arm, said industry economics make it more imperative than ever to sell whatever a customer might need, regardless of whether it’s new or reconditioned equipment.

“We’d love to sell new, but we have to face facts,” he said. “If newspapers don’t have the money for new equipment now, we still don’t want to lose a customer (by not offering a reconditioned unit). It’s far more difficult to get a new customer than keep an existing one, and if we can breathe life into an older system, when the time comes for them to buy new equipment, they’ll remember.”

The bulk of rebuild orders Ferag receives cover the company’s conveyors. “We saw this part of the business growing about two years ago, with everybody wanting to get the number in the budget,” Evans said. Ferag essentially rebuilds aging conveyor from the ground up, adding new mechanical components and, if needed, new controls, using software from Aragon.

Enhancing systems

Goss International Corp., which inherited responsibility for legacy Heidelberg inserters when it acquired the German vendor’s postpress operations four years ago, is seeing increased demand for both mechanical parts and upgraded software, said Pete Tassinari, Goss’ director of newspaper packaging systems.

“There are lots of things we can do to enhance the machines,” he said. Demand for upgraded software is particularly strong, especially as users move to connect older inserters with newer postpress systems.

“We now have software that can be used for older machines such as a 630 or 1472 and let it connect with other machines,” Tassinari said.

Denver Newspaper Agency is one publisher that melded newer and older Goss equipment when it upgraded its mailroom in 2006. The company tapped Goss to supply two Magnapak inserters but also wanted the vendor to recondition four older inserts so that operators could control all six through a single conduit.

“We did that and also engineered them to connect with planning software from Burt (Technologies Inc.)” Tassinari said.

At Muller Martini Mailroom Systems Inc., Amrish Thaker, president and chief executive officer, said that customer needs drive the vendor’s strategy. “We provide system solutions to meet the customer needs. The market is still very much there for new inserters and many of our customers, if their budgets will allow, prefer new machines. But if funds are tight or a customer already has an older model SLS and wishes to expand mailroom capacity, then a newspaper might want to go with a remanufactured machine.”

MMMS has hundreds of legacy machines in operation, dating back to the mid-1980s when the first SLS-1000s were introduced, Thaker said. “We have to be able to satisfy all of these users’ needs,” he said.  “We’ve been working with customers to modify their machines to handle narrower webs and to handle other changes.”

As with other postpress vendors, MMMS is also addressing requests from papers that want to update their inserters’ control software. “We continue to upgrade it and to also make it backwards compatible to permit customers to use their existing machines,” said Beat Loop, director of customer service. “It’s a very common thing to do. Even an SLS-1000 can be upgraded to handle such functions as finer zoning. The inserter is just the carrier; the rest is software.”