Production on a Swedish island three hours by ferry from the mainland presents particular problems for newspaper printer Pressgrannar.
The print site in Visby on the island of Gotland is being extended and upgraded as part of a programme which has recently seen a new manroland Regioman start up in Linköping. The group, which produces a dozen newspapers and in addition other newspapers, magazines and direct mail, also has a print site in Uppsala, Sweden.
At Visby, project manager Peter Dahlén says a press extension will nearly double four-colour capacity. Goss International is adding three four-high towers to the existing Community line which has four four-high towers and four mono units with 560mm cut-off.
The press was originally installed in the early 1980s and extended ten years ago to bring capacity to a total of 64 tabloid pages, with 32 in full colour. The extension will add a further 24 full-colour pages to meet demand from advertisers.
Automatic register and cut-off controls, as well as other automation features will help match the coldset quality of other group titles.
Goss will work with DCOS – which now owns US press rival Tensor – on the project. DCOS is extending the existing drive and will install a new control system platform and safety system upgrade will bring it to current standards. “Pressgrannar has been very clear in its focus on efficiency and production quality, and the order also includes our DRCS closed loop colour register and cut-off system for all webs”, DCOS managing director Mattias Andersson says.
Installations start this (northern) autumn with the upgrade phases of the control system, the DRCS system for the existing pressline, and new printing units, and is due for completion by February. The press will be in daily production throughout the project.
The Gotlands project will provide significant growth potential for the publisher, based on a small island with around 58,000 inhabitants. "The pressure from advertisers for more color in newspapers has grown relentlessly over recent years and, without a doubt, we will sell more pages of advertising with the greater capacity for full-colour pages," Dahlén says.
"Sweden is a newspaper-reading nation, so we also experience large peaks in demand over holiday periods. As we are running at capacity currently, we're not in a position to capitalise on these opportunities... but we soon will be."
The plant prints the two key titles for the island, ‘Gotlands Allehanda’ and ‘Gotlands Tidningar’, both produced six days per week in print runs of around 10,000 copies each. With the new longer press line in production, the company also anticipates printing additional evening tabloid products during summer months.
Pressgrannar is a subsidiary of NTM group and prints newspapers and newspaper-like products in the tabloids or broadsheet formats. It has 100 permanent employees and a turnover of about 250 million SEK.