Newspaper & Mailroom

marks-3zet upgrades plate production without missing a beat

Monday 10. February 2014 - On-demand plates installed in record time at Le Figaro (Paris)

In December 2013, marks-3zet upgraded the plate production lines at L’Imprimerie , a member of the Riccobono Group, without impeding production. This upgrade will enable the contract printer, based in Tremblay-en-France on the outskirts of Paris, to maintain its locational advantage with waterless offset printing.
At the northernmost production site of Riccobono Imprimeurs, the largest newspaper printing group in France, newspapers are produced in both full Berliner and half Berliner format. Some examples include the daily “Le Figaro” and the business magazine “Les Echos” from the Le Monde Group, as well as other periodicals. This is all done in high-quality waterless coldset production.
For the triple-wide KBA Cortina, with its ten four-high towers, ever shorter periods between editorial deadlines and the start of production placed growing demands on prepress performance in recent months. The three platemaking lines in the printing company were already equipped with fully automated sorting facilities. However, with a total throughput of 260 centre spread plates per hour, the plate exposure units were no longer able to handle the current production volume.
The company finally decided to replace its two slowest systems with the latest generation of exposure units – without missing a beat in production, of course. This was the task that CEO Wilfried Souchet and CTO Gilles Déchamps had in mind when they contacted the project team, which had already made a name for itself with similar projects before marks-3zet acquired the business unit from Illies Graphik. Riccobono’s top management also wanted to benefit from the proven solutions of marks-3zet, a turnkey contractor based in Mülheim, Germany.
Installation with minimum impact on ongoing operations
Last December, two KODAK GENERATION NEWS Platesetters and two marks-3zet MWP 863 plate processors – both the fastest in their class – arrived at the customer’s site.
marks-3zet took care of the spatial and logistics planning as well as an interim installation of the updated lines at a nearby location. Each of the lines were exchanged on separate days before lunchtime. After being replaced, the lines could be ramped back up to full production in the same afternoon.
The result: the new plate lines now permit a throughput of 375 double plates per hour. With the use of the plate logistics system from NELA, including NELA PlateFlow software, printing plates are also produced precisely on demand for the KBA Cortina.
Plates on demand
With these changes, marks-3zet once again implemented its proven plate logistics concept in Tremblay and got it ready for inspection within just a few weeks. Interfaces to the page workflow and tracking system have also been integrated, along with a status communication function for all plate production components.
“Efficient production and cascaded job handling for ideal availability have been seamlessly integrated in our daily job processes on the KBA Cortina. Thanks to marks-3zet’s expertise as a general contractor, this prepress project has been a complete success at our location as well,” Gilles Déchamps, technical director at L’Imprimerie, says in summary.