About 200 newspaper production people and suppliers converged on Albury, NSW, tonight for the first Australian Single Width Users Group conference since October 2007.

The event – with a theme of ‘lean, green, safe and clean’ – has a reputation for no-nonsense presentations during a tightly-timed three-day programme.
But on the night of Friday the 13th, delegates were in the mood for fun at the city’s library museum – a building funded with the help of the Mott family, former owners of the local ‘Border Mail’ – at a welcome function sponsored by Kodak’s Graphic Communications Group.

There were welcomes to the city and the event from SWUG president Bob Lockley (pictured), Peter Hook of Kodak, Stephen Cox from host Norske Skog – which owns the newsprint mill in the town – and from Damien Belkin of Border Mail Printing, now part of Fairfax Media.

The programme includes a visit to the mill – where one of the largest machines in the southern hemisphere is capable of producing 270,000 tonnes of newsprint a year, almost half the newsprint used in Australia – and afterwards a visit to a historic property in the area.

Annual awards are to be presented at a gala dinner on Sunday night, sponsored by Goss. When the event finishes at lunchtime on Monday, some delegates will also visit the BMP print site, which houses the world’s first Goss Uniliner S 4/1 newspaper press.