Newspaper & Mailroom
WIFAG open house at Le Monde in Paris
Thursday 03. July 2008 - OF 370 GTD with UV drying demonstrates its future potential in semi-commercial printing
On 8th June, the printing center of the well-known French newspaper publisher Le Monde in Ivry-sur-Seine was the scene of a WIFAG open-house event, at which the successful results of a semi-commercial printing test series over several months with UV drying were presented and demonstrated in practice.
Le Monde is regarded as one of the most important opinion-forming daily newspapers in France. The company, which was founded in 1944 by Hubert Beuve-Mery, today has a circulation of over 450,000 copies and in addition to the national main title it prints many other newspapers such as Le Monde diplomatique, Les Echos, Le Journal du Dimanche and Directmatin plus.
Despite the drupa and the European football championship, which were on at the same time, numerous WIFAG users and visitors from all over the world came to Paris to get information on the status of this ambitious development project. Among the participants were a delegation from the internationally active WAZ media group (Essen), and also representatives of Latin American newspaper companies from Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte and Porto Allegre.
The WIFAG area sales managers Peter Schurter (France) and Alexander Huttenlocher (Germany), Karl Klökler the director of the WIFAG Brazilian agent KALmaq, and head printing instructor Jörg Affolter looked after and informed the visitors as well as the Eltex product manager Jens Froehlich, and David Pasquet and Eric Carle who are responsible for production at Le Monde.
The open house participants followed both the specialist presentations by the people directly involved in the project from the Swiss printing press manufacturer WIFAG (Bern) and the dryer manufacturer Eltex-Elektrostatik GmbH (Weil am Rhein) with great interest. They also followed the production demonstrations with the four-high tower WIFAG OF 370 GTD in blanket-to-blanket configuration, which has been in service at Le Monde since the end of 2003.
After initial discussions between the Le Monde production management with director Roland Chamak respectively his deputy David Pasquet and WIFAG and Eltex in 2006, the press was equipped in mid 2007 with an Eltex Innocure UV high-performance dryer, and since then it has been tested intensively under different production conditions both with normal newsprint and with light weight coated (LWC) paper. UV inks were used in combination with normal blankets and hybrid cylinders and were tested for their suitability in practice.
WIFAG and Eltex have been development partners in the area of UV drying in newspaper printing since a test series that was started in 2003 in St. Gallen and which was continued at the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ). Eltex is regarded as a pioneer in UV drying at high web speeds. This polymerization based drying respectively hardening process, which up to now has mainly been used in sheet offset printing, has also been made attractive for rotary offset printing. Because of the shorter web leads, it is a real alternative to heatset drying in newspaper printing and can be efficiently used for 1/1, 3/4 or 1/2 webs. Further projects at Herold-Druck in Austria, in the MAN-Technikum in Augsburg and at Transmag (Canada) have demonstrated that UV drying can currently be used at web speeds of up to 13.7 m/sec without any reduction in quality.
High-tech components such as two high-power UV modules for each side of the web, electronic switching and peripheral devices for energy optimized cooling, air exhaust and nitrogen supply make possible a reliable, economic and ecologically profitable operation of the press. The INNOCURE process is decisive for the hardening of the UV inks at maximum press speed. This replaces oxygen, which is introduced with the air, by nitrogen by means of high-voltage plasma across the web. This prevents the inhibition of the photo-initiators and chain-breaking during polymerization. The polymerization process and therefore the hardening of the printing inks takes a very short time.
At the WIFAG open house, the Le Monde production manager Roland Chamak drew a very positive conclusion of the WIFAG UV drying development project: “In contrast to regional newspapers, national newspapers currently have a difficult time and must try to compensate losses with new market niches. Improved product quality and also increased production flexibility can be achieved through expansion possibilities in the semi-commercial area. A press can hardly be operated profitably and economically with only the daily newspaper as a core product. A broader utilization is indispensable for a higher ROI. The product must be made more attractive to readers and our product portfolio must be extended to magazines, weekly newspapers, advertising papers and inserts.”
“Together with our partners WIFAG and Eltex, we have tested semi-commercial hybrid products and intensively accumulated coldset/UV practical experience over the past months. The printing and commercial limits of this complementary process were established. Because of our daily production and the work involved in changing over from coldset to UV, during the test period there was only a short time window available during the night on some days. However, with the support of WIFAG and Eltex significant progress was made and after the initial approaches with different printing inks, ink manufacturers, blankets, rubber rollers and types of paper, in the meantime high process stability without variation has been achieved.”
“From phase to phase we could extend the product size and print-run of the test productions and already during the third test we could produce complete print-runs of over 100,000 copies. We produced a special edition for the drupa, which described the joint project with WIFAG and which demonstrated the high quality standard. We have declared the test phase as being successfully completed and we shall shortly make an investment decision that will enable the use of this progressive drying technology in daily production.”
“Tests always take place within certain compromises. The best solution would be to reserve a printing tower exclusively for UV production or to extend our WIFAG OF 370 GTD with an add-on four-high tower. In the meantime, we print 8 million newspapers a week and thanks to the new possibilities we shall further increase our capacity utilization level. Our record is 3.5 million over a weekend. At present, the capacity of our press is 80,000 copies/h and the UV dryer is nowhere near its limits.”