Presses in Brisbane, Sydney and Townsville will have their control systems upgraded as part of a multi-million dollar News Limited order.
Dutch press colour control developer QI Press Controls will install new closed-loop colour control systems – the first of their kind in Australia – while manroland web systems will upgrade systems on the presses to its latest technology.
Specifically – and as previously reported– the four Newsman presses at Murarrie in Brisbane will have completely new drive and press control systems, replacing the obsolete reliance drives for which parts are no longer available
The other presses, including nearly-new manroland Geoman presses in Sydney and Townsville, and one much older Geoman in Sydney, will have lesser upgrades tailored to their specific needs. All will be brought up to manroland’s latest control systems specifications, including PECOM systems and the new tablet-based controls announced at DRUPA.
News Limited national production and logistics director Geoff Booth confirmed that News will install QI’s closed-loop colour density system – which takes over the task of adjusting ink to match prepress data – on the Sydney and Brisbane presses. “It’s been proven that it works, provides efficiency, and will deliver better control and quality,” he says.
The IDS installation will also include colour registration functions, replacing the QuadTech equipment at the sites. Plans to extend the technology to News’ metropolitan print sites in Melbourne and Adelaide are “on the drawing board”.
There are no plans to expand the colour capacity of the Brisbane presses, each of which has 96pp of back-to-back full colour capacity. Booth says such an upgrade “would cost a bucketload of money” and the use of full colour – weekend editions of the ‘Courier-Mail’ frequently have several webs of spot-only colour – was a matter of production planning.
The local announcement of the group’s “significant capital improvement initiatives” follows an announcement in Frankfurt a fortnight ago that manroland Web Systems would upgrade controls on the Brisbane presses.
Booth says the investment is an important message to the industry, News’ customers and staff, that it is committed to newspapers: “The upgrade addresses a number of our business objectives around customer deliverables, quality and efficiency.”
Both manroland and QIPC are named in today’s announcement that the commitment “will deliver long term viability of (News’) print business by replacing, upgrading and extending its press control systems.
“It will also deliver a long term support pipeline for the electronic equipment used to control the presses and will mean that trying to procure hard to find components will be a thing of the past. Additionally this investment will adopt latest innovation technologies in optical measurement and controls that will improve product quality and provide consistency for customers.”
Managing director of manroland Australasia Steve Dunwell says he is thrilled with the order and News Limited’s continued partnership with manroland web systems. “News Limited’s worldwide operation has a significant installed base of manroland web presses. Their commitment and investment in innovative technology for their existing presses is reassuring and a very positive move for the print media industry. It’s certainly very good news,” he said.
The choice of manroland and its PECOM control technology, and the confidence shown in the restructured company was “fantastic”, he said.
Chairman of QI Press Controls Menno Jansen said in a statement that he was honoured with the prestigious order and looking forward to the partnership with News Limited: “This order demonstrates that print is still alive and investments are being made in quality optimisation and production efficiency.
“We are pleased to be recognised by News Limited as one of the world’s leading companies in optical measurement and control equipment for the graphics industry.”
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