Even in this twilight period of newspaper production, opportunities still exist and there are some bright spots already to be noted in this new year of 2020. This past Sunday night, January 12 saw Great West Newspapers (GWN) of St Albert, Alberta begin new daily production of Postmedia’s tabloid Edmonton Sun along with a second regional daily and 14 other weekly and twice-weekly newspapers. GWN has been printing Postmedia’s metro broadsheet, the Edmonton Journal since the summer of 2013. Although this work is another new size and format for GWN and represents a substantial increase in volume to their already busy printing plant, no major changes were necessary. That’s due in large part to the efficiency of the specially designed and highly efficient Multi-Format triple width press installed in 2013.

With these new 31 cm (12”) tabloids, GWN will now be producing an ever increasing range of different types of products on a daily basis including broadsheet, tabloid and magazine formats in sizes including 41cm (16”), 35cm (14”), 31cm (12”) and 27cm (11”) along with the ¼ folded (magazine) variants. In addition, paging can range from just 4 pages all the way up to 144 pages for tabloids and broadsheets of up to 72 pages and 6 sections, all in full color. Most incredible is this can be done with a press crew of just three people.

To further promote this high level of production efficiency, the press and every step of the process was designed to minimize human intervention. To that end, changeovers are done without any tools with all major adjustments and settings being implemented by the touch of a button. Because of the consistency this type of methodology provides, turnaround times are very quick (30 to 45 minutes) and overall waste is extremely low (less than 5% annually).

Although many believe this wide range of products would be best run on single width equipment because of their perceived ‘flexibility’, in reality it would be much more labor intensive and highly inefficient. On the other end of this spectrum, although highly productive, most double and triple presses installed all over the world today do not provide such flexibility in product size and format.

This is where this Multi-format press design really shines. It has the flexibility of a single width press and the productivity of a triple width press. This is accomplished not only with a unique mechanical design and configuration but, it works in concert with a highly customized and totally integrated control system to fully exploit the mechanical capabilities of the system. The result is minimal manning, low levels of waste and quick turnaround times. It makes this Multi-format triple width press installation one of the most productive and efficient among its peers anywhere in the world today.

Production concept, press design and project management by Web Offset Services (www.weboffsetservices.com).