The publisher, which prints the Daily Express, the Sunday Express, the Daily Star, the Daily Star Sunday and a number of supplemental publications, is building a new production facility to house the presses. All told, Express is investing more than $150 million in new print production and packaging equipment. Ferag is supplying the postproduction foundation.
The four doublewide KBA Commander CTs will go on-edition in 2012 and give Express Newspapers 4-color capability throughout its stable of papers, said David Broadhurst, CEO of Express' print unit.
Baldwin, EAE tapped
The machines will be configured with four jaw folders, a cutoff of
"The high level of automation will extend throughout the pressline, dramatically reducing the time input required for operation and maintenance," Broadhurst said.
The machines will also be used for contract work, including the Daily Sport, and will allow Express to produce its magazines in-house.
At first, the presses will be coldset only, but heatset dryers will be installed at a later date, KBA said, adding that provisions for additional towers are also part of the contract.
Better capacity
The new presses will replace Express' existing machines, which are only capable of producing 22,000 newspapers per hour.
Configuring newspaper presses for both heatset and coldset operation remains the exception rather than the rule, but at least five North American print sites have charted the same course. They include The Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Va., Transcontinental Northern California, which produces the San Francisco Chronicle, Transcontinental Canadian sites producing The (Toronto) Globe and Mail, and the Butler (Pa.) Eagle.
Meantime, KBA said it sold two triplewide Commander CTs to German newspaper publishers, making them the first European printers to deploy the 6-by-2 press.
Der neue Tag in Weiden bought a triplewide configured as as two towers with two double turner decks, a folder superstructure with three formers, a KF 5 jaw folder, a section stitcher, a skip slitter and a variable perforation unit. The press will go into operation next year.
Badische Neueste Nachricthen in Karlruhe, meantime, purchased a press engineered with four printing towers and two folders. Installation is to commence next summer and go into operation in late 2011.
In North America, triplewide Commander CT presses are in operation at the (New York) Daily News while Transcontinental will commission four triplewide CTs purchased as part of its contract to print The (Toronto) Globe and Mail.
Posted: Thursday, July 29, 2010 10:53 am | Updated: 12:46 pm, Thu Jul 29, 2010.
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