Gulf News Waterless Offset Printing

Gulf News Waterless Off set Printing

- to conserve water, expand product offerings.

Koenig & Bauer Cortina press and Toray waterless offset plates a winning combination for the addition of high-quality commercial print services

Toray, providing innovative solutions for waterless offset printing, has reported that Gulf News, the largest circulated English-language newspaper in the United Arab Emirates, has been using now for a couple of years the Koenig & Bauer Cortina waterless offset press with 12 towers. Of the 12 towers, four are heatset. Gulf News is using the Toray IMPRIMA WA waterless offset plates.

The company, with their facility in Dubai, has increased press utilization by adding commercial work serving the retail and magazine markets, including its own flagship weekly magazine, The Friday. It also converted from tabloid to Berliner format in conjunction with the installation of the new press, a format that is increasingly popular in the international newspaper industry. The company’s state-of-the-art printing plant, located about 40 km from the city center, was opened in 2012 and employs about 100 production staff. Overall corporate employment, including editorial staff, is at 800.

“We are very proud of our highly automated, state-of-the-art plant here in Dubai,” said Robert

> Using Koenig & Bauer Cortina waterless offset press with 12 towers. > Overall lower environmental footprint achieved with Cortina waterless offset printing using

Toray IMPRIMA plates. > Exceptional quality with Toray IMPRIMA – 150-line screen, very fine dot with very low dot gain.

Key Notes :

Renyold, Production Manager. “Not only is the facility completely climate controlled, but automation is everywhere, from our print room to paper storage and reel handling, mostly done with robots. Being located in the desert, water is a scarce resource, and implementing waterless offset printing in our new facility was an important decision, for us and for the planet.”

Renyold, who has been with the company for 15

years and recently took over responsibility for managing the Cortina press, adds that other decision criteria were the reduced waste, lower emissions and overall lower environmental footprint achieved with Cortina waterless offset printing using Toray IMPRIMA plates.

Quality was another important factor. “This configuration gives us a very high level of quality,” Renyold notes. “With the Toray IMPRIMA plates, we are able to produce a very fine dot, and dot gain is very low. We also use a 150-line screen. Together, that delivers exceptional quality.”

Renyold points out that this elevated quality level has enabled the company to produce

gain in revenue thanks to the ability to produce very high-quality commercial work, which he says they were not able to do before.

“We also value our relationship with Toray,” Renyold states. “We had the task of converting from conventional offset to waterless offset, while at the same time adding commercial applications. So, a fair amount of change was required. Toray worked very closely with us during the implementation process from the inception, helping us produce the best possible quality plates on our Kodak Generation plate setter and marks-3Zetwaterless plate processor. It was an extremely smooth implementation with their help, and the fact that our climate requires us to have a completely climatecontrolled facility also made implement much easier, with very consistent humidity levels in our paper stock. To achieve the high quality we aimed at with our new waterless offset platform, we needed the consumables –

including plates, inks and paper – to be very stable and work well together. Toray worked with us to ensure we achieved that. They also visit us regularly to oversee our operation, and when we need help or support, they are right there to help us. Toray is truly a valued partner for Gulf News. As a side note, we share our enthusiasm for supporting the tennis sport. We continue as the Official Newspaper supporting both the WTA Tour and the ATP 500 World Tour, while Toray has been a supporter of the International Tennis Foundation (ITF) World Cup Junior Tennis Finals for boys and girls under 14.”

Toray Industries was founded in 1926 and has a global presence with factories and sales offices in Asia, Europe, Middle East, South and North America. The main businesses of Toray are fabrics and textiles, plastics and chemicals, IT-related products, environmental and engineering solutions, carbon fiber composite materials, life science and others. Many of the products are developed from its proprietary polymer technology base and are commonly used by the electronics, packaging, textile, automotive and aviation industries.

Toray Graphics, a subsidiary of Toray Textiles Central Europe (TTCE), is based in the Czech Republic and features a state-of-theart manufacturing line for waterless printing plates. The Prostějov facility consolidates all business operations, including sales, customer service, marketing, production and R&D, for faster, more efficient support of Toray’s independent network of dealers and distributors in the European market.

Coldset Printing Partners updates its press and mailroom operations

The Belgian company invests Euro 35 million for added quality, productivity and sustainability.

With the closure of its Brussels facility, one goal was to reduce the production footprint while at the same time increase capacity across the other plants.

Toray Graphics has announced the investment of ě35 million by the Belgian printing company Coldset Printing Partners (CPP) which has updated its press and mailroom capabilities with the recent outlay. This investment, required to improve quality and productivity, also had sustainability in its sights. The company converted a part of its operations to waterless offset printing by adding the Koenig & Bauer Cortina printing press in conjunction with Toray IMPRIMA waterless offset printing plates. With the closure of its Brussels facility, one goal was to reduce the production footprint while at the same time increase capacity across the other plants.

“Part of that initiative was to add the waterless offset technology to our operations” says Paul Huybrechts, CEO. “We now have a press line consisting of 11 towers and five folders. That includes four new Koenig & Bauer Cortina waterless towers with two folders, and seven towers of the existing Koenig & Bauer Commander conventional coldset web press with three folders.”

While this change meant a reduction of the maximum pagination for most of the newspapers from 96 to 64

> 4 new Koenig & Bauer Cortina waterless towers with two folders. > And 7 towers of Commander conventional coldset web press with three folders. > A total capacity increase of 25%, even with the Brussels closure.

Key Notes :

pages, there is still one folder capable of handling 96 pages if needed. “The result of this reconfiguration,” Huybrechts adds, “is a total capacity increase of 25%, even with the Brussels closure.”

Another goal was to increase the print quality and enable the production of commercial work without the need to add heatset. That was the reason for adding the Cortina towers using Toray IMPRIMA waterless

offset plates. “Including a varnishing unit and using an appropriate white paper quality allows you to achieve a top-quality product which is really comparable to heatset,” Huybrechts notes. “This is important because we believe that for the future of this site, we need to have a good answer for a certain quality level. It also gives us the opportunity to print magazines that are currently printed in heatset. In fact, this is already beginning to happen.” The plant is producing about 500,000 newspapers per night and about 40 million copies a month in total, about 30% of which is third-party work.

On the sustainability front, Huybrechts points out that the Cortina towers do not use solvents or water, adding, “But even more important is that we have a very low start-up and running waste. It takes around 30% longer to make-ready the Commander than

the Cortina, and the start-up waste can be double or even more. Waste on the Cortina can be as low as 80 copies of white paper and 40 printed copies.”

The prepress department is also benefiting from these changes with the Heights waterless plate processors used to process the IMPRIMA waterless plates. Huybrechts states, “The Toray plates are non-ablative, meaning less cleaning of the equipment is required.”

CPP is currently using IMPRIMA WA plates that require pretreatment involving a small amount of chemicals – 5 ml/sqm – to make the upper coating soluble. “To eliminate even this small amount of chemistry,” Huybrechts says, “we will be moving to the new IMPRIMA WJ water-washable plates that not only eliminate the need for pre-treatment

Newspaper mailroom systems

chemistry but also use a chemical-free contrast enhancer to provide the image contrast necessary for the plate bending, punching and sorting systems.”

Huybrechts admits that ink and plates can be more costly with waterless offset printing. Ink cost increases due both to the actual cost of ink and the ability to achieve higher ink coverage. “However,” he says, “that is only one piece of the puzzle. You always have to look at the complete picture. For instance, we can charge more since we can achieve a quality very close to heatset without having to use a dryer, which is not only expensive to run but also has high CO2 emissions and other sustainability issues. Plus, the energy consumption of the Cortina is lower than that of the Commander, with as much as 5% less energy use. And the Cortina is so easy to use, that even I can run it!”