Top-ranked newspaper publisher maintains quality and productivity for dependability and reliability

KBA North America announces that its knowledgeable web offset service department has completed a retrofit of nine reelstands in the pressroom at The Buffalo News, the largest circulation daily and Sunday paper in upstate New York and Western New York's top source for up-to-the-minute news coverage. This unique web service retrofit/rebuild program, which is only offered by KBA, offers preventative change-over installation from drive components from AMK and BRC on an existing web offset press and replaces them with new enhanced technology.

“At KBA we are able to audit, analyze, and recommend programs to our customers and even non-customers to increase output and quality,” says Stefan Prohaska, director of customer service at KBA North America. “Asset condition and reliability is key to dependable production and delivering products on time. Our goal with the web offset retrofit service is to provide newspapers with reliable manufacturing and successful production on their web offset presses and to keep the technology running smoothly.”

Prohaska and his team delivered the new reelstands to the Buffalo News pre-assembled and ready to be mounted and re-wired. During the month-long installation, the KBA team worked hand-in-hand with the newspaper’s production team seamlessly.

“We are a regional print site for several key publishers such as The New York Times, American Sports Media, Johnson Newspapers, Neighbor2Neighbor Publishing, and a variety of monthly and weekly titles,” says Bryan Carr, vice president of production at The Buffalo News. “These publishers place great faith in my production team to produce their products on time, on budget, and with great quality appeal. In order to accomplish this feat, it’s important that our printing equipment has components that can be supported and serviced by not only our staff but our vendor’s staff as well.”

Carr feels that the retrofit process is an investment made by the publisher that helps to differentiate his newspaper from other print houses that don’t see the need to reinvest, which inevitably shows in their poor quality and making excuses to the customer about late deliveries. KBA’s work, he says, helps to keep the newspaper’s equipment in top performance, and reduce its operating costs. In fact, the Buffalo News has for the third consecutive year ranked first in quality for printing The New York Times across 25 regional print sites, Carr says proudly.  

“We chose to use KBA because we have complete confidence in KBA, its service director, Stefan Prohaska and his team of U.S.- and German-based technicians and resources,” says Carr. “Plus we have had a very long relationship with them and we place a lot of trust in their ability to implement changes to our equipment. We can unconditionally say that they are knowledgeable about our busy schedules, their staff is flexible, and most importantly, their skilled technicians have performed this same retrofit with success on other presses globally.”

The Buffalo News and KBA have formed a long-standing partnership ever since installing its first two press lines in 2002. According to Carr, KBA has been instrumental in several changes; these include a cut down from 50-inches to 48-inches, installing additional color couples that allowed the newspaper to acquire its New York Times business in 2009, performed a slip ring repair for the newspaper a couple of years back; and most recently the newspaper utilized its print trainer to help coach the newspaper’s new press operators since they were expecting retirements in its journeymen ranks. Looking ahead through the rest of the year, the Buffalo News has asked KBA to prepare quotations on investments for replacing other upgradeable parts.

The Buffalo News is the primary newspaper of the Buffalo – Niagara Falls metropolitan area. The Buffalo News continues to be Western New York's No.1 news source, providing in-depth, up-to the minute news in print and online. The Buffalo News continues its long tradition of breaking news, and in-depth reporting of the latest in local news, sports, business, politics, opinion and arts and entertainment from around Buffalo and Western New York. Founded in 1880, the paper today has a daily circulation of 138,895 and a Sunday circulation of 204,504.