Finishing & Screen Printing

Axel Springer Printing House in Berlin-Spandau Expands Mailroom

Monday 26. April 2010 - In addition to its nine NewsLiners, the Axel Springer printing house in Berlin-Spandau is commissioning two further ProLiner newspaper inserting systems with CoLiner pre-gathering units from Muller Martini. From the beginning of 2011, production will increase to more than 20 editions of weekly newspapers for the Berlin area, with a total circulation of approx. 1.5 million and up to 15 inserts per title.

In addition to the nine daily and five Sunday newspapers that are printed on a total of nine NewsLiner inserting machines from Muller Martini with a maximum of six feeders, Axel Springer in Berlin-Spandau will in future also be printing its weekly papers for the Berlin area. The 20 different editions are printed in Nordic tabloid format, for which the total circulation totals approximately 1.5 million copies. To date these have been produced externally but in the future they will also be printed at the Berlin-Spandau site to improve the daily utilization of the company-owned equipment.

Ideally Equipped for Fluctuating Insert Volumes
From the fall, the two new identically configured ProLiners will provide the additional inserting capacity needed by Axel Springer — required on the one hand because the production of daily and weekly newspapers shall overlap and secondly because the weekly newspapers each have an average of six to ten inserts; at peak times, this can reach fifteen. This is why the Axel Springer printing house has equipped each of the twelve-station ProLiners with a CoLiner pre-gathering unit with six stations, making it perfectly equipped for fluctuating insert volumes.

Bottom Sheet Marked Using Inkjet
The main sections are rolled from the printing press on to the PrintRoll systems and are then transferred via the two existing twin unwind stations in a shingle stream from the Newsveyor conveyors and feeders on to the ProLiner. Both of the newspaper inserting systems comprise three CombiStack package creators with a built-in supply for bottom sheets on which the sales information (route number, bundle number and insert identification) is printed using an Inkjet printer. Now that the compact bundles are transferred directly to strapping, the Axel Springer printing house can guarantee a high level of process reliability despite the main products being thin. The expansion of the existing Muller Martini Mailroom Production Control (MPC) system also ensures that the mailroom workflow if fully controlled and monitored.