Offset Printing
New building. New press. Good News all around.
Monday 05. May 2008 - Newspaper readers, advertisers and organizations looking for high quality commercial printing all will find good reason to celebrate in mid-June, when a new MAN Roland UNISET press is "on edition" in Lewiston, Idaho.
More than just a new press, the UNISET will anchor an all-new 32,000-sq. ft. newspaper and commercial printing production center for Tribune Publishing Co. (TPC Holdings, Inc.) The center will also house IT and prepress, plus the Distribution Center for TPC publica-tions.
Publishers of the 25,000-circulation Lewiston (ID) Tribune and the Mos-cow-Pullman Daily News, which serves the university cities of Moscow (University of Idaho) and Pullman (Washington State University), TPC broke ground for the production center in March of 2007. The new press will occupy the buildings tallest section, which is about 40 feet high.
Located just east of the current pressroom and newsprint storage area, the new facility also enables the company to reconfigure and add packaging equipment which, in turn, gets the news ready for delivery sooner. Mean-while, the MAN Roland press itself enables TPC to do even more.
Opening new avenues for growth.
“Readers as well as advertisers will appreciate the improved newspaper quality and increased color well now be able to provide,” asserts Wayne Hollingshead, TPC General Manager. “And we can do it with the UNISET at twice the speed of the Goss Urbanite its replacing.
“We have been running a full two-shift operation,” he continues, “so the UNISET will open up a significant amount of press time for us. We anticipate being able to fill that time by generating more commercial print-ing work.
“This area offers excellent potential for growth, adding to our existing client list from retail firms, universities and community newspapers.”
UNISET speed, flexibility: key factors in purchase decision.
Although TPC considered presses from other global manufacturers, Hollingshead cited speed and flexibility as key factors in deciding to go with MAN Roland.
Furthermore, he points out, with the UNISET, both factors work hand-in-hand. At 75,000 pages per hour in three-wide mode, the press can deliver six pages per web in straight mode and 12 per web in collect mode. Press units can accommodate premium rate color, flexible page placement and split web leads perfect for this multiple-publication operation.
The press also can quickly be converted to variable width production ideal for the extremes that typify numerous commercial printing projects.
MAN Rolands PECOM system plays a key role in every area, automating multiple aspects of pre-production (edition planning, imposition makeup, run-to-run optimization), press operation (presetting, quality control, diagnostic reporting), and post-production consumption tracking, maintenance management and more.
“The MAN Roland-UNISET complete product-service package and press capabilities will enable us to not only pursue new business opportunities,” sums up Hollingshead, “but also to better serve readers and clients who have been with us for years. Thats good news, all around.”