In the Belgian city that was the cradle of letterpress craft, a new project is being hailed as the world's first substantial application of digital newspaper printing technology.

Church newspaper Kerk & Leven (Church & Life) – which has a weekly circulation of 300,000 copies – will switch its 500-edition local section to digital, printing on two Océ ColorStream 3900 inkjet webs.

Production of the catholic title at printer Halewijn in Antwerp is expected to start in the next couple of months following installation of the two presses. The second is going to Belgian post office subsidiary Speos, which will provide technical support and back-up.

Currently Halewijn prints a 16-page main section on a manroland Mediaman newspaper press, and the four-page local news section – which has edition runs of as little as 200 copies – on two narrow-web Drent Vision presses which have UV curing.

Halewijn has also commissioned software which will enable parishioners throughout the country to submit and edit content for their local editions.

Rather than change the product to suit the presses, the ColorStream inkjets have been modified to increase their web width to 560mm from the standard 540mm. The twin-tower inkjet webs will print in full colour on 49 gsm improved newsprint at 127 metres a minute. The plan is to complete half the run on Thursday, completing it on Friday and Monday.

Stefan Vanysacker of project manager P3 Print Publish Package says that while they were keen to keep production control inhouse, they realised they needed the support of a partner such as Speos. “Digital production of newspapers will allow us to manage content and to interact with our readers in a much more flexible way and so extend the capabilities of the newspaper.”

Research indicates that copies of are read by an average of ten people and kept for three days. “Thus the visibility of print is much greater than an online publication can achieve,” says Vanysacker. “Switching to digital printing allows us to both continue with a recognised publication and to reinforce its impact.”

In the first stage, the localised four-page wrapper will be printed on the digital presses and assembled with the offset section. Apart from providing back-up, Speos – which prints a billion A4 page equivalents a year of transactional and other work at sites in Anderlecht and Fleurus – will test the digital-only printing of the whole 20-page publication using Hunkeler newspaper finishing.

The order with Canon-Océ – which is integrating the whole project – stems from a meeting at the WAN-Ifra Expo in Vienna in 2011.

Halewijn has a mix of web and sheetfed equipment. The coldset Mediaman press – configured to print four colours on one side and two on the other – has an 840mm web width, with the Drent narrow-webs handling 420mm webs, both with a cutoff of 578mm and spot colour. Owned by the Flemish dioceses, the company also prints books and journals, including other church newspapers and bulletins.