The scene is set for today’s DRUPA opening in Düsseldorf with upbeat presentations from two of the industry’s traditional giants and the announcement of an innovative digital newspaper project.

There have been relatively few of the usual pre-show manoevrings and alliances – wait for news of those later today – but despite troubles at the ‘heavy metal’ end, all the usual suspects have been rounded up.

Both Heidelberg and manroland – jointly between the Possehl-owned web systems and Langley-owned sheetfed divisions – held traditional pre-show press conferences on Wednesday, while the industry’s other intensive care case, Kodak has its on Thursday morning (local time).

The Heidelberg announcements are of course, sheetfed. Like Komori and manroland sheetfed, it will team with Benny Landa to deliver his ‘nanographic’ digital print technology. Heidelberg chairman and chief executive Bernhard Schreier says it will be incorporated into new-generation digital presses for commercial printing. The deal complements other partnerships under the Linoprint brand.

Given that what the industry needs is a working example of digital printing’s potential in newspapers, there’s a bit more excitement in the manroland web systems announcement. Through its strategic alliance with Océ, the company announced a new project in France with production on an integrated manroland and Océ system.

Peter Kuisle, manroland web systems executive vice president for sales, service and marketing, gave details with Océ executive vice president Sebastian Landesberger.

The deal with Rivet Presse Edition equips a plant for distribution-optimised production of a claimed 40,000 newspapers in five hours.

Under a project called Synapse – developed with regional daily ‘L’Echo’ in Limoges – the partners say a new business model will open up editorial opportunities for publishers.

Most of the 10 million Euro investment goes into the equipment which will produce national, regional and overseas editions of daily newspapers, printed in the order required for delivery around Limoges.

A 90-minute delivery radius has been defined around the new 960 m2 production plant.
Project leader Christian Sirieix says digital production opens a new economic model supporting “editorial innovation” and highly targetted advertising.

“Central to the success will be use of a cutting-edge production line consisting of integrated manroland and Océ equipment,” he says.

Two 200 metres/minute Océ JetStream 4300 colour inkjet webs will be teamed with new ‘fully variable’ manroland VPF211 pin-type folders, which can produce broadsheet or tabloid newspapers in either long or short grain formats, and with different structures.

Sirieix says the project is unique project for newspapers anywhere in the world: “On the same production line several different titles can be printed and released in the exact order required by the distributor,” he says. “Better still, the production line will be able to publish newspapers ‘à la carte’, that is to say some having a common core of content where topics can be added or removed from one day to another, according to the reading interests of each subscriber.”

He says he expects production and distribution costs should be “considerably lessened” by the fact that the titles are printed at localised print plants.

manroland’s Kuisle says it is exciting to see the company’s hard work in research and development activities and their common expertise paying off in a future-oriented project.

“This can change the way some newspapers will be printed and distributed in future,” he says.

Other developments from manroland web systems included the extension of the energy-efficient DriveSys motion control and drive system to newspaper presses. A first Colorman autoprint site has been running at DHO in Crailsheim, Germany, since the end of last year.

The system – based on Siemens componentry – includes diagnostic functions which speed commissioning and troubleshooting, the company says.

manroland also announced the signing in March of an order for a two-tower Geoman press for Fujian Daily Group’s Xiamen factory in southern China, following a tender. The 75,000 cph double-width press with two splicers and a PFN-23 folder, will be delivered by the end of this year. It will have movable formers in the folder superstructure to handle web widths of 1440 and 1360 mm.

Fujian has a staff of more than 2000 and produces 20 titles at three sites. Biggest of these are the daily ‘Haixia Doushi Bao’ (about 300,000 copies) and ‘Fujian Ribao’ (about 180,000 copies).

The giant DRUPA print fair officially opens today (Thursday) when further major announcements will follow. KBA, Kodak and French digital inkjet innovator Impika have their press conferences today, with others including Agfa, Goss International, Müller Martini and Memjet – which uses Australian-developed printhead technology – following tomorrow.

The show continues to May 16.