Harmsworth Quays Printing Limited, London, (HQP) is investing for future demands in their printing plant at Surrey Docks, replacing existing presses with new KBA Courier flexo units and the existing mailroom system with IDAB WAMAC Mailroom technology. IDAB WAMAC is a wholly owned subsidiary of Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG (Heidelberg). HQP is a wholly owned subsidiary of Associated Newspapers Limited and prints the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday, Evening Standard and Metro as well as other supplements for its titles. The daily printing volume is approximately 2 million copies per day. HQP uses flexo printing to improve the quality of their products reducing the paper waste and increasing faster start up procedures. Handling of flexo printed copies puts a higher demand on the publishing room equipment, as the surface is glossier than offset printed copies. HQP has investigated which mailroom equipment available on the market handles flexo print in the most efficient and gentle way and the choice fell upon IDAB WAMAC. The decision to replace the existing Mailroom lines with IDAB WAMAC was based firmly on their good experience of the installation and the performance of the existing IDAB WAMAC equipment connected to their newest flexo press, which was installed during 2001. The IDAB WAMAC gripper conveyor system uses a specially designed conveyor, which makes it easier to pick up the newspaper stream copy by copy. The IDAB WAMAC mailroom order consist of: - Seven single copy gripper conveyor PCC 903, which is designed for gentle handling of the printed copies at high speed. The wide design of the gripper puts less pressure on the individual copy and is especially suitable when running the high colour paginations that HQP does. - Fourteen stack/packaging lines including the TS 800 Stacker with bundle catching and pressing device and rotary pusher for efficient bundling, and under-wrapping with dispatch conveyors for packaging and delivery. - One tray-sorting system from Crisplant, which is a newspaper bundle transporting and sorting system capable of handling multiple stack/packaging lines at high speeds. The project will last over a three-year period and when it is completed HQP will have a ”state of the art” printing plant to meet the demands from their customers. “The IDAB WAMAC equipment has demonstrated its ability to help maximise production output from our new KBA press. We are confident that IDAB WAMAC is the system to meet our production requirements into the future” says Mr John Bird, Managing Director, HQPL. “We are very proud that HQP has given us their confidence in modernising their mailroom operation and we are totally confident we are providing the best available solution” says UC Edberg, Managing Director of IDAB WAMAC. With effect from September 1st 2002 Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG (Heidelberg) took over the Swedish engineering company IDAB WAMAC International AB (IDAB WAMAC). This company was founded in 1958. Today, IDAB WAMAC is a world leader in the supply of mailroom systems for newspaper printing industry. It delivers automatic systems and in-house developed software to control processes for newspaper flow, inserting, storing, bundle production, and sorting & loading. IDAB WAMAC's registered office is in Sweden, and it has subsidiaries in Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Hamburg and London. The company operates globally, its most important markets being Europe, and the industrialised regions of Asia.