The Knoxville News-Sentinel, Knoxville, Tennessee, a unit of Scripps Howard, Inc., has placed the second North American order for new REGIOMAN presses from MAN Roland. The order includes two 70,000 cph four-page-across, one-around, shaftless motor-per-bridge presses. They will replace presses installed in 1964 and will significantly expand the newspaper's color and paging capacity while also improving pressroom productivity. "We are gratified to see the rapid acceptance of the REGIOMAN and its unique design and advanced technology as evidenced by this order from The Knoxville News-Sentinel," said Vince Lapinski, vice president, MAN Roland Newspaper Group. The new presses will be installed in The Knoxville News-Sentinel's new headquarters facility to be built on 28 acres in a Center City Business Neighborhood in downtown Knoxville. A "greenfield site" within the city, the new 165,000 sq. ft. headquarters building will include 100,000 sq. ft. of space for pressroom, paper and pre-print storage and Packaging Center operations. The Knoxville News-Sentinel's presses are scheduled to begin arriving in mid-year 2002 with all equipment scheduled to be up and running by the first quarter of 2003. The decision to replace the exiting presses, which had been converted to flexo process in the 80's, coincided with planning for the new headquarters facility and the recognition that the presses were in need of replacement. "Our decision on which press to order was the result of a thorough investigation of what the major press manufacturers had to offer," said Ted Milligan, operations director for The News-Sentinel. "We set up a team to evaluate presses based on how we do business and conformity with our capital equipment budget. "We selected the REGIOMAN based on the unique capabilities of the press, a good relationship enjoyed with MAN Roland here and at other papers," said Milligan. "What we saw at other sites that operate MAN Roland equipment impressed us." The REGIOMAN's one-plate-around design and automated features were seen as offering special productivity, quality and business advantages to The News-Sentinel. "We expect to cut plate usage in half and improve color register with the one-plate-around design, reduce waste with the short web leads, run later deadlines and - in combination with new mailroom equipment - still get the paper out earlier," said Milligan. "Best of all, our advertisers will be able to have color virtually anywhere they want it." The News-Sentinel's two REGIOMAN presses will be installed in a single press line on a concrete substructure furnished by MAN Roland and will feature 96 printing couples with 50 inch web width and 21 inch cutoff. The press line will include 12 eight-couple towers for printing 4/4 color. The arrangement will comprise four tower units, a 2:3:3 80-page single jaw folder with six formers, four more tower units, a second 2:3:3 80-page single jaw folder with six formers and four more tower units. The press line can be split in two, providing two-out capacity for up to 48 pages straight (no collect mode) with full color on every page or up to 56 pages with 40 in full process color and 16 with spot color. The presses also can be run as a single large press with up to 80 pages straight, with up to 48 pages of process color and 32 of spot color. The press line also will include a total of 14 core-driven CD 13D reel-tension-pasters. The two RTPs in excess of those needed for the 12 towers provide the capability to run one additional web on each side of the press by splitting tower units. The REGIOMAN pressline will be controlled by MAN Roland's state-of-the-art PECOM 2000 control and networking system which will have six control desks, including two with drive control and four for color control as well as a TPP workstation for production planning and job storage. Also included in the installation is the AUROSYS modular material handling system which is custom-tailored to meet the requirements of The News-Sentinel. The AUROSYS system comprises multiple elements that work together under the AUROLOG computer control system to transport paper rolls from storage to a semi-automatic stripping station and then by AUROPORT shuttle carts into a buffering system or directly to an AUROLOAD 2.1 automatic roll loading system which loads the RTP.