Cover Story

18

The same can be said about thenewspaper industry in this young 21st cen-tury. For newspapers, it doesn't get muchmore “big ticket" than a brand new press,and their high prices have been reflected intheir relatively poor sales during the pastseveral years. According to Vince Lapinski,senior vice president of web operations forMAN Roland, press sales among most ven-dors had picked up for a while in the Unit-ed States during the boom years of thelate-1990s, but most have had to endureslow sales for much of the past decade.

The drop-off in press sales has beensignificant, Lapinski says – as much as 30percent in the past few years. “The 1980swere an all-time high for sales," he says.“But now everyone is contracting their op-erations. It used to be about a half-billion-dollar market back then. Now, it's abouthalf of that."

While Lapinski doubts that the indus-try will ever see a return to the 1980sspending spree, he does see encouragingsigns with some big orders in recent years,especially in Europe and Asia.

There also have been signs of activityin the United States. At the Gannett Co.,alone, there have been five major press in-stallation projects, involving 10 new units

from MAN Roland and KBA, since 2000,says Mark Mikolajczyk, senior vice presi-dent, operations, for Gannett. By 2004, hesays, the media giant plans to install threenew KBA Coloras at The Courier-JournalLouisville, Kentucky, and two new MANRoland Regiomans at The Honolulu Adver-tiser in Hawaii. In addition, Gannett hopesto have six new MAN Roland Geoman 75sinstalled at the massive Detroit News andFree Press production facility in 2005.

How are these vendors managing tomake sales like these in a continuing eco-

In a sluggish econo-my, it is usually thehigh-priced, big-ticket items thattake the hardest hitwith consumers.When searching fora new car during arecession, mostpeople will foregothe luxury Cadillacsand the Mercedesfor the more practi-cal Hyundais andHondas. Or, theyjust make do withwhat they have.

nomic slump? To Lapinski, the answer is tooffer a leaner, meaner press that can domore for less.

Gone are the days when newspaperscould spend exorbitant sums on new hard-ware just to get the latest model, Lapinskiexplains. “Now, it's more of a financial de-cision," he says. “Every potential purchaseis more scrutinised for genuine financialreturn on investment. It's really driven bythe bottom line."

For Gannett, some of the reasons fordeciding on the new press investments,Mikolajczyk says, are to address advertis-ers' increasing colour demands, to reduceweb width for commercial printing oppor-tunities, to reduce waste with shorter cut-offs, to replace aging letterpresses, and toimprove efficiencies by reducing staff.

“Today's presses are selling for a lotless than before and have a lot more tech-nology," Lapinski says. “Basically, clientswant more technology for less money, and,by and large, they're getting it."

Going commercialOne of the main engines of change in

the past few years has been the need forcolour. While most of the demand hascome from advertisers and readers whowant better quality, there is a secondary,but still vital, incentive: Commercial print-ing. Many newspapers that only a decadeor so ago used to seek out commercialprinters for spot jobs have turned the tablesand are now establishing their own com-mercial press runs for other clients, evenother newspapers.

“For every press we have sold in re-cent years, the client has looked for com-mercial printing capabilities so they cancompete," Lapinski says. Features such asvariable web-widths, shaftless technology,gas-drying units and quarter folders havebecome more popular with papers lookingto increase their flexibility and allow forthe quick changes required with most com-mercial jobs.

At The Knoxville (Tennessee) News-Sentinel, a massive, new US$ 50 million

Printing strategies and technologies: U.S. market

Today’s presses:Lean, mean printing machines

Randy Woods October 2003 newspaper techniques

Mark Mikolajczyk, Gannett:

Says the company plans to installa number of new presses duringthe next couple of years – inLouisville, Honolulu and Detroit.

19

production facility has been built with bothnewspaper and commercial printing inmind, says Ted Milligan, operations direc-tor for the News-Sentinel. Since its start-upin January of this year, the new facility,equipped with MAN Roland Regiomanpresses, has printed the paper's 125,000daily circulation and 175,000 Sunday runs,as well as the daily student newspaper forthe University of Tennessee-Knoxville.

The Regioman units – configuredwith 96 couples, 14 reels and two folders –have a 50-inch web width, “which betterpositions you in the commercial arena,"Milligan says. The 70,000 copy-per-hourpresses provide two-out capacity for up to48 straight full-colour pages.

With so much colour capacity, Milli-gan says the new facility rivals not onlyother large newsprint production opera-tions but also most other commercial oper-ations in the area. “Everyone I've talked to

has increased their commercial capabili-ties," he says.

At Gannett's Indianapolis Star, fournew MAN Roland Geoman 75s have beenprinting its own 250,000-circulation paperas well as press runs for five other Gannettproperties in the region since July 2002.

In addition, the US$ 73 million facili-ty produces other niche publications, suchas a “Big Auto" weekly circular, monthlyhealth guides on the quarter folder and 2.4million holiday sections in Midwest andSoutheast, says Richard Rinehart, projectdirector of the Star's production center.

Finding the right mixWith the high-quality performance of

today's equipment and the extra dollarsthat can be made by commercial jobs, somenewspaper publishers with new presses areputting more thought into how their opera-tions are structured.

“When you look for a new press op-eration, you have a very large investmentthat sits idle for many hours during theday," says Tony Chavonne, business man-ager for The Fayetteville Observer. “Youhave to decide whether you're a newspaperfirst, with a compliment of commercialprinting, or if you're a commercial printerfirst, with a newspaper as just one of yourproducts."

The printing of the 74,000-circula-tion daily may be job No. 1 at the Observer,but commercial printing projects also playa major role, Chavonne says. The paper gotinto position in November 1999 with thepurchase of a new shaftless KBA Colorapress that allowed 48 pages of consecutivecolour. The performance of the new presswas impressive enough to get the Observerrecognised last year in the InternationalNewspaper Color Quality Club, sponsoredby Ifra and NAA.

newspaper techniques October 2003 Randy Woods Cover Story

���������������� �� ���������������������

��������������� ��������������������� ��������������� �������������������� ����

����� ����� ���� ���������������� ������������� �����

�����������

� �����������

�������������������� ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������Phone: +46 8 556 708 00, Fax: +46 8 556 708 20, E-mail: sales@denex.se��������� �!����Phone: +1 412 369 2590, Fax: +1 412 369 3599, E-mail: gcarroll@denexinc.com

����������������� ������������������ ���

�������������������������� ���������������������

Cover Story

20

A new, high-performance press,Chavonne says, “gives you a tremendouscompetitive advantage to leverage your al-ready existing relationships into more printjobs." By adding a single former board onthe paper's back-up folder, the Observerwas able to print a TV book. The positiverecommendations from that job have led tofive other TV book contracts, he says. Oth-er “leveraged" niche products include 33college curriculum guides and a large ac-count with Creative Loafing, a 180-pageweekly tabloid for the Atlanta and Char-lotte markets. “The projects are all 100 per-cent due to the high quality and colour ca-pability of the new press," Chavonne says.

In 2001, the Standard-Examiner,based in Ogden, Utah, purchased a 70,000-issue-per-hour KBA Comet press. “Thepress was bought as a newspaper press, butthe flexibility it offered for newspaperniche products and as a semi-commercialpress cinched the decision to go singlewidth," says publisher Scott Trundle.

“We are in the newspaper businessprimarily and in the semi-commercial busi-ness where it makes sense," Trundle says.“We want runs of 50,000 to 1 million thatcan be run off shift, or during idle hours.We strive to print our presses on something– the newspaper or commercial jobs – 16hours per day, six days per week."

On the flip side of the coin, some pa-pers have elevated commercial printingfrom a sideline operation to the core oftheir production business. When TheGazette in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, replaced itsMetroliners with a single-width Goss Uni-versal 70 press in its new, US$ 50 millionpress and packaging centre in 2000, pub-lisher Joe Hladky was thinking well beyondthe paper's daily runs for its circulation of65,000. The 240,000-square-foot facility,which tripled the size of The Gazette's oldplant, prints King Features' Sunday colourcomics sections that run in 125 differentpapers across the country. Today, morethan 60 percent of The Gazette's print ca-pacity is dedicated to commercial work.

“The goal of our printing operation isto be a commercial printer, and our maincustomer is the newspaper," Hladky ex-plains. “We figured, since you've got Xnumber of millions tied up in iron, youmight as well use it."

Other advantagesCommercial printing, of course, is

only one part of the equation when compa-nies decide to purchase presses. Other effi-ciency enhancements, such as automaticpress control systems, played an even larg-er role in Gannett's decision to purchaseKBA and MAN Roland presses, Mikolajczyksays. “[The systems] can automatically ad-just dampener and ink controls for differ-ent web widths, which helps the presses tobecome more flexible. In addition, the splitreel arms help reduce make-ready time."

For Rinehart and The IndianapolisStar, the three main justifications for thepaper's enormous press investment werenewsprint waste reduction through a short-er cut-off, a reduction in labour of 88 staffpositions, and an addition of 2.5 timesmore colour on each press run. Originally,when the Star first considered moving to anew print plant, the idea was to “make do"with their existing Goss Headliners bymoving them and their third-level formersto the new building and adding new colourtowers. “Later on, we discovered that wewere going to spend the same amount ofmoney on upgrades as it would take to buyall new equipment," he says, so the Stardecided to replace the Headliners with thenew Geoman 75s.

For the News-Sentinel, the waste sav-ings, alone, created by reducing the stan-dard cut-off from 21.5 inches to 21 incheswas one of the more significant reasons forbuying the new press, Milligan says. How-ever, even more important was the need toreplace the paper's 1964 Hoe Colormaticpresses that had been converted to flexog-raphy in the 1980s. “We hadn't been ableto replace our presses since the 1960s, sowe had held off for a while," Milligan says.

“You don't want to penalise yourself fornot keeping up."

New wave of upgrades?Such long delays in press upgrades

may eventually lead to a surge in press or-ders, says Lapinski. There are still many oldletterpress operations that refused to up-grade during the ’80s and are still puttingoff due to the poor economy. “That's sort ofthe final battlefield," he says. “Some pub-lishers are stubborn and say they don'tneed it, but the short-term goal is to getthem to finally convert to offset."

Rinehart predicts that upgrades suchas additional towers will be common in thenext five to 10 years, followed by a re-newed push to buy new presses.

In the short term, says the Observer'sChavonne, newspapers may start looking atalternate, cheaper ways to achieve high-quality colour. The near-future, he says,“will see more of a blend of sheet-fed,heatset printing, with enamel-based coversaround high-quality newsprint."

Possibly the greatest problem thathas always hindered press sales, Lapinskisays, is the inherent inability of the prod-ucts to retain their value. “ROI in presses isusually not very good," he says. “There area lot of infrastructure costs. Most otherbusinesses wouldn't want to own us." Thedepreciation and increasing maintenancecosts of the older offset market that hasbeen around for 20 years or more is al-ready becoming a new issue, Lapinski adds.“For those papers, the main questions are:‘Should we add new colour? Should we geta shorter cut-off? Or add a colour tower?What do we do next?'" he says.

While there has been much talk ofthe continuing evolution of digital technol-ogy and computer-to-plate systems, theStandard-Examiner's Trundle says digitalpresses are a generation or more away fortoday's working pressrooms. “Only recentlyhave press innovations in shaftless drivesand sophisticated electronic controlscaused the industry to focus on the kind oflabour force that will be required to operateand maintain digital presses," he says. "Itwill take much time to make this transitionin the work force. The transition from let-terpress to offset was painful enough in thelate '60s and '70s. The transition to digitalpresses will be an even greater sea changeand will take many years." <

Randy Woods October 2003 newspaper techniques

The press configuration of the three new KBA Colora presses for The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky.