8-Unit Muller Martini Prints Ads for 'LA Times'

By: Jim Rosenberg Tribune Co. subsidiary California Community News of Irwindale, Calif., is printing on an eight-unit Muller Martini A68 variable-size web press that it installed last year in its 325,000-square-foot printing, inserting and distribution facility. The facility opened in 2002 and relies on post-press systems developed by Muller Martini subsidiary GMA.

Configured, with a splicer, for roll-to-sheet production, CCN's automated A68 is designed for high-quality multicolor printing at up to 1,200 feet per minute. "We can print eight colors," said CCN Production Director Russ Newton, but "we typically configure it for four-over-four." Most work, in fact, is 4/1, he added, and some 1/0 -- a sheet printed in black or spot color on one side only.

CCN inserts preprinted ads produced on its A68 into daily and Sunday editions of the Los Angeles Times, and it produces more than 3.5 million copies of the Times' direct mail jacket every week. The new production center (E&P, April 28, 2003) also prints multiple real estate and auto sections and the seven newspapers published by Times Community Newspapers, a division of the Times.

Muller Martini Press Division Product Manager Don Geiger said the German-built A68 "is really the first" such Muller Martini press sold to a North American newspaper company. Until now, he added, CCN had outsourced the work on a local printer's Didde press.

Bringing the work in house, said Newton, has proved "very, very lucrative." But CCN needs to print only 8 1/2 x 11-inch and 12 x 11-inch pages, and "can do six-up of 8 1/2 by 11," said Newton, from a 27-inch-wide web and a 22-inch cut-off. "We take six sheets and deliver them into a total of three stacks," which are manually loaded onto skids that are moved to inserting or storage.

Owing to the limited formats required, CCN does not vary the size of cylinders on its A68. "We do not avail ourselves of the option," said Newton. If used, he explained, "the whole print couple can slide out and be replaced with a print couple with another cutoff." Using what he described as a device like a small trolley, the cylinders are easily swapped out. "We actually use that for maintenance and cleaning," said Newton.