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IfraExpo 2008 Looking Outside the Box

January 13, 2009 | By Caryl Holland

Despite the world-wide financial uncertainty, IfraExpo 2008 which was held in Amsterdam in Holland at the end of October had a buzz about it. Not surprisingly, the attendance figures were down on last year but obviously the newspaper industry is taking an upbeat attitude towards the economic situation. As Gerd Finkbeiner, chairman of the executive board of manroland, said at the show, “I believe that this banking crisis will make the business world refocus on real values, products and business models. There are as many opportunities in this as there are risks.

Dr Haas Mediengruppe signing the contract with manroland to print the Manheimer Morgen (from left): Heino H. Rump, Head of Special Projects manroland AG, Gerd Fink beiner, Chairman of the executive board, manroland AG, Anton Hamm, Executive Vice President Newspaper manroland AG, Augsburg, Dr. Björn Jansen, Dr. Haas GmbH, and Harald Blendowski, Mannheimer Morgen

“In the future more than ever before, everyone will look at the business model, something which has been lost over the last few years. I believe that it will have a dramatic consequence in the reconstruction of businesses.

“Now is the time to ask what do you need to do in order to manage your costs and processes. How do you innovate and offer your customers solutions which make them stronger in these challenging times. No one knows what will happen in even one or two years but we need to take the situation as an opportunity rather than a disaster.”

Practising what it preaches, Manroland launched at the show the ‘one touch’ vision. In other words, a system whereby there needs to be only one person at one console and two buttons — start and stop: everything else is automated from the platesetter to the mailroom.

Interestingly, Autoprint as this concept is being called will be first offered on a ‘compact’ (5.7 rather than 6.8 metre high) Colorman 8-cylinder satellite tower. However, it will be available eventually for all the company’s presses.
The first newspaper publisher to order a Colorman Autoprint is Dr Haas Mediengruppe in the Rhine Neckar region of Germany which publishes five daily newspapers with a total circulation of 135,000. In addition, the print facility produces three other newspapers with a total circulation of 62,000.

Due to go live in January 2010, the new press will consist of four 8-cylinder towers, four reel splicers and two folders. It will have a maximum web width of 1,400 mm and a speed of 45,000 rph. The press will feature a number of closed loop automatic systems including in-line tension control and the CutCon cut-off register system which Manroland says operates almost entirely without additional marks.

It will also be fitted with manroland’s Automatic Plate Loading (APL) system. In addition, the plates will be stored in cassettes and will be taken automatically to the appropriate press cylinder using a rail transport system. This is a new development for manroland but it is not the only company working in the area: Nela and Beil Registersysteme were offering plate transport systems at the show.

There was also news concerning automatic plate loading systems. For instance, Wifag announced that it has developed such a system which is currently being tested on a customer’s press, while manroland announced more orders for its APL robotic system, the beta trial having now been completed at Saarbrucker Zeitung in Germany where two systems are in daily operation under production conditions.

Despite such developments, the press manufacturers have been hit by the economic downturn. As was pointed out at the show by Christoph Muller, KBA’s executive vice president of web press sales, marketing and service, at just Euro€700 million, global demand for newspaper presses this year is b arely two thirds its average volume. He said that while the United States has seen the largest slump, printers in Western Europe, China and the Far East have also rigorously scaled back their activities over the past 12 months. He also reported that spiralling paper prices in India have resulted in a moratorium on new purchases in recent months.

On the bright side, however, raw material prices are expected to drop significantly as demand drops. Muller concluded, ‘The market situation is not easy but it is not hopeless. We have to deliver the best tools to make print more competitive.’
In KBA’s view, this fundamentally means compact presses, a trend which other manufacturers are now following. However, as was pointed out by Klaus Schmidt, KBA’s marketing director, its compact Cortina and Commander CT presses afford easier access to the blanket cylinder and washing systems than compact satellite presses which are also taller.

Schmidt also claimed that with compact satellite presses, heatset drying could be a problem, while changing a wet offset press between UV and coldset can take up to three hours. Consequently, for regular use, a dedicated tower is needed to make economic sense.

Newszines
Either way, many people at the show were convinced that we are likely to see many more ‘newszines’ being produced in the future. Recognising this, the PrintCity supplier alliance announced that it is planning to examine the value added printing of magazines. It will use the same approach as it did for newspapers in the Vapon study, combined with experience gained from the 2008 PrintplusX project. The study will be carried out over the next two years.

The alliance will also be examining ultra-wide web offset (uwwo) heatset production. In other words, the use of web widths of 2,250 and 2,850 mm which enable production of up to 96 A4 pages, both long and short grain. This will follow on from PrintCity’s ‘Watch the step to larger roll diameters’ project which evaluated the advantages and disadvantages of moving from 1,250 to 1,500 mm diameter paper reels. It will analyse technical parameters, economics and best practice knowledge, and will address the complete production process from pre-press to post-press.

Currently, the project team members are Luscher, Manroland, Megtec, Muller Martini, Sun Chemical, Trelleborg and UPM. However, it is understood that a plate supplier will also be joining the project.

Thermal versus violet
Which direction will computer-to-plate (CtP) develop? Which plate technology will dominate in the future? Will a processor-free plate become available?

These were some of the questions being asked of the plate suppliers at IfraExpo 2008. Although they did not have all the answers, there were some rather surprising replies.

Fuji
For one thing, rather than dying away as some expected, the debate between thermal and violet technology for newspaper production has hotted up again. Although Fujifilm provided further information on its so-called ‘chemistry-free’ plate, the Pro-VN – it has the same sensitivity and productivity as conventional CtP plates, a bath life of 10,000 Berliner sized plates or up to four weeks, and a maximum run length of 200,000 – the company also announced that it is to offer its first thermal newspaper plate outside Japan.

Called the Brillia LH-NN2, the plate can be imaged in 830 nm laser diode equipped platesetters. It is said to be suitable for production runs up to 300,000 and can hold a two to 98 per cent dot at 150 lines per inch.

With Kodak already firmly established in the thermal newspaper plate market, this leaves Agfa as the only one of the big three world-wide plate suppliers not offering a thermal newspaper plate. Instead, it is concentrating on its N92-VCF ‘chemistry-free’ violet plate. Like the Fuji plate, it covers newspaper applications for run lengths up to 200,000 copies which the company says represents between 80 and 90 per cent of the market. So far, some 15 newspaper printers are using the plate and Agfa plans to expand sales from January 2009.

Agfa
Agfa also announced a new conventional digital plate. The N92V is the successor to the N91 but has a higher maximum run length of 350,000 copies. It can also be used with ultra-violet inks.

Then, for the mid to small newspapers requiring plate imaging speeds from between 75 and220 plates an hour, Agfa launched at the show a range of ‘economic’ violet laser platesetters and complementary workflows. The Advantage N series was developed together with Punch Graphics which manufactures Agfa’s newspaper platesetters, and is described as a completely new product.

It has new violet optics with a 120 MW laser diode which are said to give improved imaging quality at all resolutions, making the platesetter also suitable for semi-commercial jobs. Also new is an industrial standard single board controller with Can-bus technology, UGRA simulation, and the FlexWheel and Flexpin registration systems.

Krause
At the other end of the spectrum, Krause Biagosch has upgraded its LS Jet violet platesetters so that it is capable of imaging up to 350 plates an hour at 1,016 dpi.

“Since its introduction in 2002, for us, the LS Jet is still the technology platform for newest components in violet ctp platesetting,” said Thomas Richter, technical director at Krause Biagosch, at the show. “The new LS Jet 350 gains more speed with a faster polygon, an 160 mw violet laser and a quicker NetLink data interface.”

This makes it, according to the company, the fastest platesetter on the market, at least theoretically, since at the moment there is not a punch bender capable of such speed, the fastest being between 310 and 320 plates an hour. However, it does mean that the speed at higher resolution is also faster, as was pointed out by Stefan Beke-Bramkamp, sales and marketing director at Krause Biagosch.

“If you can produce at 1,270 dpi around 300 plates an hour, you can fully benefit from more output per CtP line as the platesetter, processor and punch bender run at that speed. The result is that bigger newspapers need less CtP lines or, with a given number of ctp lines, we are able to provide 25 per cent more capacity than our competitors which means a 15 minute later editorial deadline.”

Editorial consolidation
When it comes to front-end systems, IfraExpo 2008 could be described as the ‘single show’ since the consolidation trend stretched all the way through the process. The need for a single newsroom has been recognised by the newspaper industry for some time. However, advances in technology and reduced staffing levels have now made it both possible and imperative.

As a result, why and how newspaper newsrooms need to change was being debated on many stands at IfraExpo. Although the systems varied somewhat, all of them could handle different types of data — not just text and pictures but also video — and offered synergies across multiple output channels including mobile devices and Web television. For instance, Tera Digital Publishing was demonstrating how, with its GNPortal and GN3 publishing software, a mobile phone can be used to take a still image and brief video, transform and repurpose them and then publish them via the Web, print or other means simultaneously.

Then there was KnowledgeView which, as part of its new extended PublishLive multi-publishing software, demonstrated the ability to publish television lists to mobile phones. In other words, multiple incoming sources of content can be managed and repackaged for multiple channels, sending them out with a single click.

The keep it simple theme was also being demonstrated on Escenic’s stand where version 5.0 of its core software was launched. This enables writers and editors to complete a range of tasks within the same work space. Personalised search and information panels are also integrated enabling continuously updated external or internal feeds on each person’s screen. In other words, all the necessary tasks can be completed without the user having to leave the work desk.

Then, much to many people’s surprise, Quark announced at the show that it had extended the capabilities of its Quark Publishing System (QPS) 8 to include support for Adobe InDesign and InCopy. As a spokesman pointed out, “A large number of customers use both and it didn’t make sense not to support both products in a single workflow.”

X-Advertising
Just as the newsrooms are having to move down the cross-media route, the same is true of the advertising departments. Their systems not only need to be modernised but the departments need to become more accountable in their advertising effectiveness something which Miles 33, for example, has recognised with its new Intelligent Internet Advertising software which is claimed to offer complete cross-media advertising for print, Web and mobile phone by linking new revenue sources, generating leads to sell additional Website sponsorship packages, Websites and e-mail services.

Indeed, although newspaper publishers are huge content creators and distributors, it is generally recognised that they still need to make more use of the information they own, as well as to gather, process, store and distribute information in the most efficient way possible. As Don Oldham, ceo of Digital Technology International (DTI), pointed out at the show, “In order to remain relevant, we believe that media organisations have to transform themselves quickly from process oriented “manufacturers” of newspapers and Websites to become true audience-centric multi-media businesses. To do this, they need intimate knowledge about each of their audiences and the ability to precisely target content to each of them. They will have to implement transforming technologies that break down the barriers between the old processes.”

So far as DTI is concerned, this can be achieved through its Liquid Media technology which enables the sharing of information and digital assets throughout the enterprise, while DTI Circulation, for example, apart from managing distribution enables lifestyle demographics to be used to build a direct mail business, create targeted marketing campaigns and manage customer relationships.

Finally, finishing
As could be seen at IfraExpo, post-press is becoming a much more appropriate term than mailroom for the finishing end of newspaper production due to the rising number of value added tasks being undertaken in such facilities. A case in point is inserting where the latest equipment is making it viable for a wider range of operations including those of smaller newspapers.

Take, for instance, the new EasySert from Ferag. Using technology from its JetFeeder hopper, the FlyStream pre-collecting system and the UTR conveyor, the EasySert is said to be suitable for handling small circulation but high supplement volume newspapers. The system has a net maximum speed of 25,000 copies an hour and being modular it can incorporate up to 40 hoppers, the basic configuration comprising paired sets of two hoppers.

Muller Martini also focused on inserting at the show announcing the Alphaliner S which is capable of handling 18,000 copies an hour. This compares with 15,000 cph for the previous Alphaliner which it replaces without a price increase.

Muller also launched the AddOnModule for its mailroom production control (MPC) system. Basically, this enables newspaper producers to distribute third-party products such as newspapers, magazines or product samples via the existing infrastructure and distribution channels, thus spreading distribution costs and creating competitive advantages. To achieve this, the existing ramp system is fitted with an additional in-feed station from which manually or automatically, third party products can be combined into co-mailings and then distributed to the right vehicle.

In other words, it is yet another product which enables newspaper producers to expand their business by ‘looking outside the box, something which will become increasingly important in the future.