WATFORD, England - KP Services (Jersey) Limited, a collaboration between Kodak and Guiton Group Limited, marked the grand opening of their new inkjet printing facility in Jersey, Channel Islands, with an official opening ceremony attended by customers, partners, suppliers and employees.The world's newest inkjet printing plant creates a new approach in newspaper printing.

The ceremony was attended by KP Services (Jersey) Limited’s Managing Director, Jack Knadjian; Chairman of Guiton Group Limited, John Averty; and the Jersey Minister of Economic Development, Tourism, Sport & Culture, Senator Lyndon Farnham.

The new facility, managed by Alan Palin, General Manager for KP Services (Jersey) Limited is home to two KODAK PROSPER 6000P Presses and four Hunkeler Combi-Solution Newspaper finishing lines and will print the Jersey Evening Post as well as the majority of U.K. national newspapers for distribution in Jersey and Guernsey. KP Services (Jersey) Limited will print over 35,000 newspapers in total each day (made up of the combined circulations required for each separate publication). The KODAK PROSPER 6000P Press was designed specifically for publishing applications such as newspapers and books and print at speeds of up to 1,000 feet (or 300 meters) per minute on standard newsprint paper delivering close to 3,000 newspapers every hour. They are ideally suited for print sites that have to print a large number of low-volume titles. It would not have been possible to print so many titles with such a diversity of print runs (less than 300 to more than 15,000) and some with very high page counts using offset technology.

Executive Quotes

Jack Knadjian, Managing Director, KP Services (Jersey) Limited said “Kodak has pioneered inkjet printing and this manufacturing plant will be used to demonstrate the value of PROSPER 6000 Presses to our newspaper customers around the world. This is a test bed for us, and a test bed that will prove that over 35,000 copies of newspapers can be printed digitally every night on two presses. This equipment and model also provides so many more commercial opportunities that will be exploited to the full in due course.”

John Averty, Chairman of Guiton Group Limited said “This is very exciting for us to be a part of the innovation in printing newspapers digitally now and into the future. Our objective was to print the Jersey Evening Post digitally and decommission our offset presses. We are confident that the KODAK PROSPER 6000 Presses, combined with the Hunkeler finishing equipment and our own expertise in publishing and distribution makes this the right time to move forward.“

Senator Lyndon Farnham, Minister of Economic Development, Tourism, Sport & Culture said “We are delighted to see such innovation brought to the island. The Jersey operation will be a worldwide showcase for the inkjet printing of newspapers and is a welcome investment into the Jersey economy by such a prestigious global company.”