QIPC-EAE Americas wins retrofit order from Costa Rican media company 

Marietta (GA) - Grupo Nación of San José, Costa Rica, has requested QIPC-EAE Americas to modernise various EAE systems on its newspaper and semi-commercial press. The American branch of Q.I. Press Controls and EAE cooperated with its agent, Print2Finish, to win the order. The retrofit project concerns a KBA Comet web press which was commissioned at the end of 2004 and upgraded from an eight tower to a ten four-high tower installation in 2008. Due to the installation of two heatset dryers, one section of the press is also suitable for semi-commercial production with enhanced or coated papers. The web press has been equipped with EAE control consoles, the EAE PRINT system for production planning and pre-setting, the EAE INFO system and Net and Service PCs. The press also features colour register control as well as cut-off register control systems from Q.I. Press Controls. 

The web press operates seven days a week. Besides the two dailies La Nación (100,000 copies) and La Teja (120,000 copies), Grupo Nación also produces El Financiero, a weekly business newspaper. Grupo Nación also contract-prints nearly forty local newspapers. Aside from newspaper production, the group's printing capacity is utilised for commercial jobs, both internal and external, such as shoppers, magazines, books and catalogues.

Rejuvenation therapy for the control and planning technology

This retrofit order is part of a major modernisation project in several phases which is scheduled for completion in 2015. It specifically addresses the replacement of the hardware for the five EAE control console PCs and the three EAE Net PCs plus the associated operating system upgrades. A hardware and software upgrade for the EAE PRINT system, including EAE Density (for calculating the ink zone presets), will additionally be realised.

Patricia Centeno, Operations Manager, explains why the newspaper printing firm decided on the retrofit project: "EAE's control consoles and systems are excellent – and thanks to the graphical user interface, they're also very convenient. However, since the operating systems for several EAE solutions have meanwhile been discontinued and support for them is no longer available, the risk of substantial lost productivity due to technical problems with the equipment was simply too great. At the same time, we're confident that updating our EAE PRINT system will give us improved press planning and pre-setting options to enable us to print more formats supplementary to tabloid. Restoring reliable production will be one benefit, yet the increased flexibility when it comes to planning and managing commercial jobs is equally important."

The retrofit work is due to be executed in San José in August and September 2015. "We can't afford to have our production disrupted by the retrofit measures, which is why press downtime needs to be kept to a minimum", says Production Manager Juan Carlos Ávila. QIPC-EAE Americas' technicians will schedule the retrofit activities around the customer's production to avoid any interruption.

The next retrofit phase for the web press at Grupo Nación is planned for the coming year. The aim then will be to upgrade the service and information systems and the press controls to the latest state of the art.