Kodak has celebrated the launch of its Jersey inkjet joint venture with UK publisher Guiton Group with a grand opening and ribbon-cutting.
Long-time digital newspaper printing evangelist Jack Knadjian, who is now managing director of the KP Services (Jersey) Limited unit, shared the honours with Guiton chairman John Averty and the Channel Island's economic development, tourism, sport and culture minister Lyndon Farnham.
The inkjet printing facility equipped with two Prosper 6000P inkjet webs and four Hunkeler Combi-Solution newspaper finishing lines is to take on production of the Jersey Evening Post, as well as most of the UK national newspapers distributed in Jersey and the neighbouring island of Guernsey, a total of more than 35,000 copies daily.
When local and industry guests attended for the opening, it was copies of the London Daily Mail and other dailies that they were to see in production. Previously, newspapers were air-freighted from their mostly London-based printing plants, with readers missing out on their favourite read when fog or other adverse conditions closed airports.
The focus is on variety rather than quantity, and Knadjian makes the point that it would not have been possible (or viable) to print so many titles with such a diversity of print runs - some less than 300 and with very high page counts - using offset technology.
The press is a publishing-specific version of the Prosper, now rated for production at up to 300 metres a minute using Kodak's Stream continuous inkjet technology. In comparative terms, this equates to about 3000 complete colour newspapers an hour, making it also a viable option for Guiton's Jersey Evening Post, for which the print order is typically over 15,000 copies.
Kodak will also use the joint venture site - in which it is understood to be substantially the larger shareholder - to demonstrate the opportunity the press presents to its newspaper customers globally.
"This is a test bed for us, and a test bed that will prove that over 35,000 copies of newspapers can be printed digitally every night on two presses," he says. "This equipment and model also provides so many more commercial opportunities that will be exploited to the full in due course."
Averty shares enthusiasm for the innovation, which has enabled them to shut an ageing web-offset press, saying it was "the right time" to make the move.
Pictured (from left): Jack Knadjian with Lyndon Farnham
On our homepage: Jack Knadjian, Lyndon Farnham and John Averty.