June 23, 2003 -- The major French dailies Le Parisien and Aujourd’hui-en-France, as well as the country's largest sports daily, L’Équipe, are starting to ramp up six new MAN Roland REGIOMAN presses. The upgrade by leading French publisher Groupe Amaury is the single biggest purchase of REGIOMAN presses to date. Each of the REGIOMAN presses is equipped with four eight-couple towers and five reel stands, and all are designed for four-color production throughout. The first machine is already working in Mitry-Mory, outside of Paris. The remaining REGIOMAN systems will be installed in Nantes, Lyon, Toulouse and Marseille, and are scheduled to start producing before the end of the year. The automated makeready capabilities of the REGIOMAN will extend editorial deadlines for papers like L’ Équipe. That will enable the newspaper to report late scores to its national readership. Also contributing to the quick makereadies is REGIOMAN’s four-across-one-around configuration, which requires half the plates a our-across-two-around press consumes . REGIOMAN’s quality color capabilities are another plus for Groupe Amaury. Since inserts are practically non-existent in French dailies, advertisements printed within the paper need to attract the reader’s attention. With REGIOMAN as their print engine, advertisers can run full-color ads anywhere in the newspaper. REGIOMAN also will provide the French papers with a new level of paging flexibility. It can produce an uneven number of sections and print in two-page increments. The sports paper L’Équipe has a daily circulation in excess of 370,000 copies, Aujourd’hui-en-France (the Paris edition being titled Le Parisien) is sold more than 500,000 times a day. All printing activities of the group are handled by Simgam (Société d’Impression du Groupe Amaury). Since the introduction of MAN Roland's REGIOMAN at Drupa 2000, More than 800 printing units, 130 reel stands and 30 folders for the model have been sold to America and Europe.