August 15th, 2005 – The French regional daily Le Courrier Picard, headquartered in Amiens in the north of France, will add a Goss Uniliner four-high tower to its existing Goss Metro web press. Increased runs of Le Courrier Picard and a rising demand for color advertising over recent years has compelled Marc Delemote, CEO of Le Courrier Picard to upgrade the organization's production capacity. M. Delemotte observes, “Color is such an important part of the business now. Three years ago, only one out of every three orders we received for nationwide advertising required process color. Last year this had risen to two out of three, and the demand for color at national and local level continues to grow all the time. For the newspaper, color has become a way to counter the impact of radio and new media by making print more attractive to the customer.” M. Delemotte explains, “Adding state-of-the-art equipment like the Goss Uniliner four-high tower is vital for our development and enables us to double the number of color pages, while delivering the high print quality needed to meet today's requirements. We did all this with minimum investment because of the compatibility of the Uniliner tower with our existing press.” For Le Courrier Picard, Goss' ability to match and integrate the new equipment to its existing Goss Metro is key in minimizing operator training and press downtime. Goss digital inking has been chosen for the Uniliner tower for its ability to match the set-up of the inkers on the Metro printing couples, and the new press line will be controlled by means of a common control system to make the transition as seamless as possible. M. Delemotte continues: “In order to enhance turnover and remain competitive we have already modernized our prepress services with two CTP devices, and developed our finishing room. The next step for us was to upgrade our printing capacity.” M. Delemotte is looking forward to the benefits the tower addition will offer his business. “Our first objective in buying the new tower is to modernize production. Once we have achieved this we are looking forward to optimizing our Uniliner four-high tower so that we are in a position to print new products.” For the last 15 years, Le Courrier Picard's Goss Metro press line, purchased in 1977, has enabled Le Courrier Picard to print its usual page count of 52 to 64 in tabloid format. Process color was previously restricted to 16 pages but now the facility will be able to deliver 32 pages of color. The existing Goss Metro press comprises three three-couple units for producing 2/1 color and three mono units, one of which will be replaced by the new Uniliner tower extension. Established in 1944 as a “Workers' co-op” and involved since 1986 with the French regional daily La Voix du Nord and the Crédit Agricole bank, Le Courrier Picard prints between 75,000 and 85,000 copies a day. Originally covering only the Somme region with four local editions, it expanded gradually into the neighboring Oise region with one edition and, since May 18th last year, into the Aisne area with one further edition.