First 3-by-2 KBA Comet in U.S.

By: Jim Rosenberg The three-page-wide press is catching on, with the sale of a second such press to in the U.S. in less than a year.

KBA North America of York, Pa., reported this week that Media General has ordered a Comet for its Bristol (Va.) Herald-Courier, which has printed for 40 years on a two-around, singlewide Goss Urbanite.

A two-around press ordinarily configured and operated for two-page-wide production, the Comet bound for Bristol will handle variable web widths, ranging from 22 to 39 inches, with a 21-inch cut-off. The versatile size and configuration also will provide more color capacity and permit more semicommercial printing. KBA also supplies variable-web-width capability for its doublewide (four pages across) Colora presses at Independent Newspapers' Dover, Del., plant (E&P, June 2, 2003) and four other North American sites.

Announcing the sale, KBA North America Marketing and Newspaper Sales Director Gary Owen characterized the Herald-Courier's Comet as "highly flexible, with fast turn-around," and able to meet the needs of "multiple small-circulation publications." KBA National Accounts Manager Bruce Richardson said that rather than new technology, the press represents "designs and technology" borrowed largely from KBA's directory presses.

Rated at up to 75,000 copies per hour in straight production mode, the floor-mounted Comet will be arranged in two parallel lines with a total of five eight-couple towers, with a sixth position reserved for another tower in the future. Seven KBA Pastoline reelstands with infeed systems will feed the press, which will run to two KBA KF 3 2:3:3 jaw folders and one quarter folder. EAE will supply a press control system with four consoles.

To print three broadsheet pages across the web, KBA will equip the Herald-Courier's Comet with specially designed turner-bar structures to bring ribbons at right angles over pairs of side-by-side formers and the folders that will be perpendicular to the press lines. According to Owen, the layout calls for the presses to work either together or independently. Webs from both presses can be brought to either folder, or each press can run to its own folder.

Beginning in June 2005, the Comet will go into a 50,000 square-foot plant to go up in an industrial park in neighboring Bristol, Tenn., about four miles from the 39,563-circulation Herald-Courier's offices. Planned and designed by architect Dario Designs of Framingham, Mass., the new facility is slated to begin production in October 2005.

The 50% increase in per-couple page capacity comes at an extra cost that is small compared with the cost of achieving the same capacity by purchasing additional units. A three-page-wide press also could be expected to require less power, labor and floor space than a press of equal capacity that requires more units. The same economies were recognized when The Bismarck Tribune decided last year to install a MAN Roland Uniset 75 designed and equipped for three-page-wide production (E&P, Sept. 8)