Newspaper & Mailroom
MANROLAND USERS TRIUMPH AT NEWSPAPER AWARDS 2009
Wednesday 29. April 2009 - On what was a hugely successful night for manroland customers, COLORMAN XXL user, Newsprinters Knowsley, were in effect four-time winners at the 2009 Newspaper Awards, held on the 22nd April at the London Hilton, Park Lane and judged by 13 industry experts.
The company scooped the prestigious Newspaper Printer of the Year Award for its work on The Times Literary Supplement (TLS) while The Times and The Sunday Times, also printed by Newsprinters Knowsley, were awarded National Newspaper of the Year and Weekend Newspaper of the Year respectively. The Sunday Times was also handed the Most Outstanding Use of Colour award in the Newspaper category. On the night, a charity auction for a VIP ticket to the Champions League semifinal firstleg between Manchester United and Arsenal, donated by manroland, also raised £650 for the Help for Heroes appeal, a charity for wounded service men and women.
In handing the award for Newspaper Printer of the Year to Newsprinters Knowsley, Gary Cullum, a director of the Newspaper Awards, praised them for their skill as he recognised the TLS supplement was a “difficult job to get right time and time again”. The weekly supplement is a relatively short run of 35,000, but is printed on 55gsm improved newsprint, which, in a plant that prints everything mainly on 42.5gsm, “must take great effort to get the result”, said Mr Cullum. In judging The Times as National Newspaper of the Year, Mr Cullum said he was impressed with the “. colour, printing and production. ” and its “superb unmarked print quality”.
The Church Times, printed by manroland UNISET customer, Mortens in Horncastle, Lincolnshire, was named as Niche Market Newspaper of the Year award. Mr Cullum praising the weekly publication’s “outstanding quality with good use of colour, consistent reproduction and “beautifully smooth tones.”
Andrew Latham, Newspaper Products Sales Manager, manroland GB said: “The Newspaper Awards are the premier event on the newspaper industry’s calendar and we are delighted by our customers’ success this year. I would like to extend my congratulations to each of them. Users of manroland presses are so successful in this industry because of the machines’ speed, accuracy, reliability and flexibility of design. But, of course, this counts for little without skilled operators. Newsprinters Knowsley’s team is highly skilled and has been fully trained on the COLORMAN press and the judges’ comments on awarding the company Newspaper Printer of the Year are proof of this.”
This year’s Newspaper Awards winners represented a good cross section of manroland’s market leading newspaper printing solutions. The COLORMAN XXL used by Newsprinters Knowsley is a triple-width, 25 satellite-tower press, with five 477 folders and automatic reel handling. The press also handles 144 pages of broadsheet paper.
“The newspaper industry is currently facing some of the toughest challenges in its history,” said Mr Latham. “A reduction in advertising revenues is being compounded by the migration on-line of classifieds such as recruitment and car advertising. However, the Newspaper Awards is a refreshing celebration of the versatility and ingenuity of the newspaper sector and it’s great to see the industry rising to meet these challenges. Still, it is a changing industry and, for its part, manroland will continue to develop printing solutions that allow customers – and future award winners – to drive down operating costs, and to that end, total automation is not far away.”
Funds were raised throughout the night for the Help for Heroes appeal and Colm Fitzpatrick of the Irish Times was the highest bidder for the Champions League semi-final tickets donated by manroland. Mr Fitzpatrick will receive VIP treatment at Old Trafford for the game between Manchester United and Arsenal, including dinner and champagne. Total funds raised on the night were just under £9,000.