Plauen, Germany -- June 13, 2002 -- A group of U.S. newspaper production executives recently met with representatives of leading American consumables suppliers at MAN Roland’s Plamag Training Center here to test consumables for their new Regioman presses. The line-up of paper, ink, dampening solution and other consumables that was carefully assembled for the trial got high marks from members of the ad hoc users group. The test team was composed of the production experts who will power-up the first six Regioman presses in the world, starting early next year. Jim Foley, Production Director of Union-News/Sunday Republican, in Springfield, Missouri, headed the customer contingent for the trip. "This week of testing was very successful," he said. "All materials and material combinations we used produced very good printing results." Summarizing the test findings, Foley concluded: "Both the prints and the measured objective criteria like density and dot gain, as well as the subjective criteria, have shown that all these materials were really satisfying. The printing quality was stable and good throughout the testing period. The customer objectives of the tests were fully achieved. It was found that the American consumables used will lead to good printing results on the Regioman and that there is more than one supplier a customer can choose." Conducted from May 21-23, the test session utilized the Regioman press in Plauen to compare consumables from several American manufacturers. The trial was the culmination of seven months of preparation that included the selection of suppliers and the consumables they would provide. Contacts between the Regioman users and the suppliers were established at the time, so the customers could input their requirements right from the start. Subsequently the consumable suppliers did a great deal of preliminary research to make sure their products would produce optimum results on the Regioman. The material the vendors provided for the Plauen evaluation included 51 reels of paper and all the ink, plates and other consumables needed to make a state-of-the art web offset press perform. Working with the suppliers during the evaluation, the Regioman users experimented with a wide variety of materials in order to determine the optimum combination for their new presses. "This user-driven testing will save time and money later on, as each of these customers ramps up for their first production runs on their own Regioman presses," said Vince Lapinski, Vice President of Web Operations for MAN Roland Inc. "Regioman is designed to make the newspapers that run it more flexible and more productive. This evaluation helps us ensure that the consumables our customers will be using contribute to achieving those goals." On the customer side, the participants in the test program included representatives from six of the dailies that are installing or will install Regioman presses. They were: the Daily Herald in Arlington Heights, Illinois; the Union-News/Sunday Republican in Springfield, Massachusetts; The Flint Journal in Michigan; The Kalamazoo Gazette in Michigan; the Knoxville News Sentinel in Tennessee; and Valley Publishing, parent of the Bay City Times in Michigan. The group of suppliers included: Bowater Paper, Flint Ink, U.S. Ink, VARN, Pressroom Solutions, Boettcher, Day International, Reeves, Conti Tech, Agfa, Eurografica, Pape & Partner and Votra.