19th March 2007 was a memorable day for the Bangkok Post. For the first time, the Thai business daily The Post Today, with a circulation of 19th March 2007 was a memorable day for the Bangkok Post . For the first time, the Thai business daily The Post Today , with a circulation of some 70,000 copies, was produced exclusively on the newly installed 4/1 KBA Prisma press. The commissioning of the first KBA Prisma installation in Asia represented an important milestone in the over 60-year history of this renowned newspaper publishing house. For the publishing group The Post Publishing Plc, the investment is set to boost both flexibility and the opportunities for growth.

When the printing of Thailand's oldest and largest English-language newspaper, the Bangkok Post (circulation approx. 63,000 copies), also moves over to the KBA Prisma from 1st June, a major project which has caught the attention of the branch far beyond just Thailand itself will be brought to a provisional close. Alongside the two daily newspapers Bangkok Post and The Post Today , the new press line is earmarked to handle also the English-language Student Weekly (circulation approx. 50,000 copies) and numerous other broadsheet and tabloid products – all with a high colour content.

Just a few weeks after the official production start of the KBA Prisma, representatives of the Thai Printing Association visited the new print facility, which also catches the eye with its ultramodern architecture. They were unanimous in their praise for the bold investment decision taken by the Bangkok Post , whose demonstrated commitment to the print medium was seen as the ideal response to growing competition from TV, radio and the Internet.

The decision to invest in a new press was one of the core elements in Post Publishing's strategic plans to move to a new production location. After all, it was not only the advancing age of the two existing Goss Community presses, which had been in service for over 15 and 20 years respectively, but also a chronic lack of additional space at the company's previous headquarters in the centre of Bangkok which stood in the way of its ambitious growth targets. A production floor space of just 1,100 sq.m. simply left no options for further expansion. But only a generously spacious solution seemed able to safeguard future business successes.

Project manager Lersak Jaturapol, operations director at Bangkok Post : “We had to act quickly and looked around for a site which not only supported our logistics concept, but also offered sufficient freedoms for further expansion in the future. We soon found a suitable location and were able to begin the detailed architectural and design planning in April 2005. Our new print centre, whose full official name is ‘The Post Publishing Public Company Limited Printing and Distribution Centre', is situated in the province Samut Prakarn, about 30 kilometres from the centre of Bangkok. With production space totalling 8,500 sq.m. and an additional storage area of 1,200 sq.m., we have much more room to breathe than at our old location.”

“Installation and commissioning of the new KBA Prisma were completed with minimal hitches, not least thanks to the professional support received from both the KBA headquarters in Germany and the specialists at KBA Asia Pacific in Kuala Lumpur, meaning that we were still ready on schedule despite an initial delay in the construction work. We have invested around 30 million US dollars in the building, CtP prepress, press equipment and a new online/offline mailroom concept. Being just five minutes drive from the new Suvarnabhumi International Airport, we have found an ideal location for the printing and distribution of our newspaper products. The management and editorial offices for the various titles produced by Post Publishing Plc, on the other hand, will be staying in Bangkok itself.”

“The switch from the two old single-width Goss Community presses to the new KBA Prisma was an enormous leap forward for both us and our staff. But the comprehensive KBA training programme for the printers was an enormous help and smoothened the potentially difficult transition. Even after just a few weeks of production, we can already say that our expectations have been met to the greatest possible extent. And the last few points we will be optimising over the coming weeks together with KBA.”

“Our decision in favour of the 4/1 KBA Prisma was based on a dozen or more different criteria. Alongside the high print quality and the production output of 75,000 copies per hour, it was the convincing value for money and the ease of handling of the whole press line which tipped the scales.”

“We already knew the high quality of the KBA folders, having involved in a purchase of a Compacta 213 web press several years ago before joining the Bangkok Post. With the balloon former on the new KBA Prisma, we are able to produce four sections simultaneously. The superpanorama pre-fold facility, furthermore, enables us to fold four broadsheet pages side by side, either for insertion into the newspaper as a separate product or for integration as a centre-spread display ad, an option which is becoming increasingly popular with advertising customers. With a cut-off length of 546 mm, the web width can be varied in two-inch increments between 1,219.2 mm (48") and 1,574.8 mm (62"). This possibility lends us significantly greater format flexibility.”

  “We currently run our new Prisma 4/1 press in one shift between 6.30 p.m. and 1.30 a.m. and will add the second shift from 1st June. In this way, we can satisfy both the journalists' demands for a late editorial deadline and the distributors' wish to have the newspapers on the ramp as early as possible. Our mid-term investment policy includes further expansion of the KBA Prisma with additional towers and a second folder. We will also be adding to the mailroom, where we consider three insertion and mailing lines per folder to be the ideal solution.”

  The new KBA Prisma installation incorporates four Pastostar RC reelstands with Patras M reel handling, four towers for 4/4 or 2 x 2/2 production and a KF 3 double folder. The press is monitored and controlled from three EAE consoles and features also the modern production scheduling and presetting system Print PP, the V.I.P. statistics system and a diagnostics PC.

Keywords: Publishing, newspaper presses, web offset