Newspaper & Mailroom
Heatset COLORMAN unites newspaper and magazine
Saturday 04. July 2009 - Roularta and manroland present the worlds first installation of a newspaper press with complete heatset equipment
The Business Forum about Automation and Enhancement in Newspaper Printing was held on 9 June in Roeselare, Belgium, at the printing facilities of the Roularta Media Group. This rapidly expanding Flemish coldset and heatset specialist impressively demonstrated what lies behind its credo and business model “Highest Quality for Advertisements”.
It is more than 20 years since Roularta Printing started gathering experience in newspaper enhancement with the first installation of an IR dryer and progressing to the first application of heatset dryers on newspaper presses. Even then, hybrid print products i.e. coldset webs mixed with full-color heatset webs were already a must to meet the higher demands placed on advertisement quality. Now this latest quantum leap into full color with complete heatset drying expresses the rapid and successful development in recent years. The demands from the market “insist on even better quality with higher grades of paper,” as William Metsu, General Director of Roularta Printing, emphasized and illustrated with print products.
Higher ad quality brings better prices
Within 50 years Roularta has grown from a small local newspaper to become a multimedia group whose printing operations generate the greatest proportion of sales in other countries within Europe, and prints close to 100,000 tonnes of paper every year. Among the product range are almost 100 magazines, Sunday newspapers, free weekly papers, and city magazines. These are mostly produced for towns and regions in Belgium, the Netherlands and France; the circulation area includes also Germany, Norway, and Spain. The highest-circulation products are the freesheet De Streekkrant with three million copies and the free Sunday newspaper De Zondag which is a tabloid distributed through bakers shops and has a print run of up to 630,000 copies. William Metsu: “The aim particularly for the city and Sunday newspapers is to produce them in the highest color quality on high-grade papers.” For advertising customers are prepared to pay more for higher color quality plus superior paper continues to be in demand. Furthermore, Roularta plans to print as many of the magazines as possible in Roeselare that has been acquired through the takeover of the French GROUPE LEXPRESS – LEXPANSION in 2006.
Euro 100 million-investment program
Highest newspaper color quality on the widest range of papers as well as capacity expansion were the objectives of an investment program that Roularta started in 2007 and involved a total expenditure of Euro 100 million. A new 22,000 square meters hall was built in Roeselare and the equipment installed there included a COLORMAN with four webs and four heatset dryers, a 72-page LITHOMAN, and a 16-page ROTOMAN with a UV coating tower for cover printing. The COLORMAN is equipped for extremely flexible coldset or heatset printing, can produce 64 full-color broadsheet pages, 128 tabloid pages or 96 half-tabloid pages, and has a maximum output of 43,000 copies per hour in collect production mode. The 96 half-tabloid pages are produced in a newly developed coldset-heatset folder (based on proven LITHOMAN technology) with a chopper fold (magnetic brake) at maximum press speed. 14,000 printing plates are changed automatically every week by the PPL system. William Metsu is convinced: “The COLORMAN with heatset dryers can produce almost the same print quality as our dedicated heatset presses.” Also on glossy coated or SC papers which was a decisive criterion for him.
High productivity required, newspapers becoming more like magazines
During the speeches given during the event in the Roularta library, Peter Leroy, Production Manager at Roularta, especially praised the perfect chopper fold that he believes is indispensable for the production of magazine sections. He explained that in choosing the heatset COLORMAN his company deliberately decided against waterless printing. A print test with UPM matt and coated papers confirmed the wisdom of this decision, Leroy added: “We want productivity and no adventures because after all the press runs 141 hours per week in four shifts.” Peter Kuisle, Executive Vice President Sales Webfed Printing Systems at manroland, remarked that newspapers are faced with two special challenges: newspapers in future will become more like magazines, and in the media competition the focus must be on cost per copy. This requires flexible press concepts: for smaller formats, for different papers, for special color effects. He emphasized that, besides newspaper heatset, coldset commercial or UV printing is in demand all over the world. Anton Hamm, Executive Vice President Newspaper Printing Systems Business Unit at manroland, explained that the new One Touch concept would in future be expanded to cover the entire product range. On the one hand this automation approach is based on the APL plate changing system with a robotic arm and automatic plate transport from the CTP system to the printing tower. On the other hand the newspaper press will be controlled by inline systems for ink density control, color and cut-off register, web tension and temperature. All functions are integrated in one workflow and one control console. A lot of One Touch modules are already in practical use, others are still under development. Anton Hamm reported that 250 blanket-to-blanket printing units have been ordered with the new robotic arm since APL was introduced at drupa.