Australia’s Fairfax Media is to switch its flagship hybrid print site in North Richmond to Q.I. Press Controls’ mRC control technology following a pilot scheme at the end of last year. Presstech equipment installed with the 12-year-old press will be replaced by systems which are “faster, less obtrusive and less costly to maintain,” according to print site general manager Michael Gee.

Fairfax brought in Q.I. Press Controls last year to provide print-to-cutoff control on two manroland Uniset 70 towers recently converted to UV printing, to deliver the closer tolerances needed for commercial work. Now the Dutch press controls specialist will installmRC-based systems for colour registration across the whole press. The 22-camera order also extends closed loop cutoff control to four webs, and includes Q.I. Press Controls closed loop fan-out control with integrated ABD air bustle device on the UV towers. Three operator control stations will allow control over the equipment from each individual folder.

The busy site north of Sydney, New South Wales, prints a wide variety of suburban, regional and agricultural newspapers and magazines. Among these is the heatset/UV ‘Good Weekend’ supplement for the ‘Sydney Morning Herald’ and a range of group real estate and lifestyle products. The unusual Uniset press combines horizontal web-lead units for heatset production with UV and coldset towers to deliver 32 tabloid pages of heatset, 32 pages of UV and 64 pages of coldset through three folders.

Gee says the pressing need was to replace the 20-year-old technology installed with the press with modern systems with smaller marks – of special importance on work including bleeds – and for which spare parts were cheaper and more readily accessible. “The old marks take a lot of space, which create issues with commercial work,” Gee says. Fairfax already had experience of Q.I. Press Controls technology from installations in nearby Newcastle, at double-width print sites in Ormiston (Queensland) and Christchurch (New Zealand), and from the pilot scheme at North Richmond.

We’ve always liked their innovation and ideas,” says Gee, “and had received good reports from the other sites about performance, parts and reliability. “Additionally, our own first stage installation has been fantastic… it just works. The whole deal is a complete system that’s right for us.”

Q.I. Press Controls managing director Menno Jansen is delighted with the order, which follows a seven-year-relationship with the Australian publisher. “Although this press had another company’s system on it, we’ve always kept in touch,” he says. “The success of the cutoff controls needed when the UV equipment went in has meant we have been able to convince them of the benefits of a complete Q.I. Press Controls System. “It was an argument reinforced by the strong performance of our technology at some of their other sites and the strength and presence of our agent Ferrostaal who have assisted us in securing this fantastic deal.”