Delmarva Media on Track to Open New Plant

By: E&P Staff The Daily Times, Salisbury, Md., reports that its new Delmarva Media Group production plant is on schedule to open early next year in an industrial park in north Salisbury.

"We took possession of the building on April 1 after Gannett Co. Inc. approved the $6.5 million investment," Times Publisher and group president Rick Jensen informed readers this week.

The facility's new press will provide better printing with more color for the group's flagship Times and its papers in Maryland, Delaware and Virginia, including the Eastern Shore News, Chincoteague Beacon and Eastern Shore Neighbor.

Dario Designs, Marlboro, Mass., was retained to devise a floor plan for newspaper production. At 48,000 square feet, the structure offers almost double the downtown building's space and is better suited for production, according to Jensen. When renovations begin, a three-foot-thick reinforced concrete press pad to support a 125-foot-long press will replace the existing floor.

St. Louis-bassed Pressline Services is remanufacturing a Goss Urbanite singlewide, two-around press capable of printing up to 60 pages, 48 in full color. The paper's 29-year-old Goss Cosmo doublewide press can print only 16 full-color pages.

Neither Times nor Gannett executives returned calls for comment on the size of the Urbanite, the fate of the Cosmo or details about new platemaking and inserting equipment.

"Our first priority" is moving production and circulation to the new site, Jensen wrote, "because of our chronic mechanical problems with our existing press." Other departments may relocate later, he added.