manroland upgrades: more color, less presses

　　Since 1985 the Telegraaf Media Groep N.V. (TMG) has been working with manroland presses. Now TMG wants more and less at the same time: more color, less presses. No problem for the newspaper technology experts from Augsburg.

　　"After the upgrade TMG's products will be printed economically and in top quality provided by manroland's latest technology. We are sure our readers and advertisers will highly appreciate the full color appearance throughout the newspaper," says Harold Tamminga, Print Director at TMG. The Telegraaf printing plant in Amsterdam produces some 8.5 million newspapers per week. De Telegraaf is the Netherland's largest morning paper with a daily circulation of around 700,000 copies. In addition they print various other daily and weekly papers. Telegraaf today operates ten TELEMAN presses. Starting in 1985 six so-called TELEMAN presses were installed. The TELEMAN presses are based on the manroland COLORMAN concept but featuring reel splicers and printing units at a 90 degree angle at ground level, at that time with a full color capability of 12.5 percent. In 1991 three additional TELEMAN presses were installed and the existing presses were upgraded to 25 percent full color capability. In 2001 the tenth TELEMAN was installed and all existing presses were upgraded to 50 percent full color capability. Now in 2011 Telegraaf has decided to upgrade all presses to 100 percent full color and reduce the number of presses to seven, configured for 32 or 48 pages. The process leading up to this project focused on finding the most economical way to create full color throughout the whole newspaper. "In a joint effort between manroland and TMG a solution was found to produce the same quantity of newspapers in full color on seven instead of the current ten presses," says manroland Project Manager Sixten Zapf. The required extra color is generated by using components from the future obsolete presses, the quality of the existing components still meets today's standards.

　　Brand-new PECOM equipment

　　To facilitate the transfer process and ensure that daily newspaper production can continue manroland will deliver four additional satellite printing towers. Moving the components and connecting older shaft-driven with new single-motor driven printing units requires a complete renewal of the cabling and the electronic equipment. This comprehends a major PECOM upgrade within the manroland printnet networking system.