Harabin Hired to Head TKS in America

By: Jim Rosenberg After twice appointing production chiefs from newspaper customer sites to run its U.S. subsidiary, Japanese press maker Tokyo Kikai Seisakusho Ltd. has put a manufacturing executive in charge of TKS (U.S.A.) Inc.

Last month, Gregory K. Harabin was named president of the company based in Richardson, Texas, where he took over from Frank Tyler. The former operations vice president at The Dallas Morning News, Tyler retired at the end of April after leading the suburban-Dallas firm for three years. In 1995, James Norris returned to Newsday, Melville, N.Y., as senior vice president and operations director, also after three years as TKS (U.S.A.) president.

Harabin, 49, moved to TKS from MAN Roland Inc., the U.S. subsidiary of the printing equipment maker within Germany's MAN AG. Based in Charlotte, N.C., Harabin rejoined MAN in January 1998 as its Newspaper Group's sales manager for the southern region stretching from Oklahoma to his home state.

Harabin has no prior relationship with TKS. He first joined MAN in 1981 as a design engineer and rose through the ranks, becoming a manager overseeing flexo and offset projects and newspaper applications chief engineer. In mid-1995 Harabin left MAN to direct engineering and customer service for the Charlotte-based commercial photopolymer equipment division of Nippon Paint Ltd. That division was sold to NAPP -- known to newspapers for its letterpress and flexo plate business once co-owned by Lee Enterprises and now a part of MacDermid Inc.'s Printing Solutions unit. Since returning to MAN, his biggest recent project has been the sale and installation of 4-by-1, Regioman presses that went into production early this year at The Knoxville (Tenn.) News-Sentinel.

Harabin said he takes over at TKS with the objectives of enhancing technical support services, as well as continuing to sell both new presses and additions. The former, including training and installation management, are now under the direction of another recent hire, John R. Steker. With Bob Ray & Associates for 13 years, Steker served in sales, account management, installation estimation and planning, and project management and scheduling. Sales of tower additions to TKS and other manufacturers' presses, which have grown in recent years, sustained TKS during the 1990s when it booked no new-press sales in this country.

Early on, TKS added color capacity to its own and others' presses, first with decks and later with towers. It also has had a tidy trade in inker upgrades. Before it added KBA towers to its Goss presses, the Austin (Texas) American-Statesman put TKS digital inkers on its Metroliners.

Besides new press sales, Harabin said he also foresees a further growth spurt in the upgrades and additions business. Goss International and KBA North America began selling towers as additions a few years ago; Harabin's former employer, MAN, announced in June that it, too, will join the fray, for the first time offering to integrate its towers with others' installed presses.

Harabin joined TKS (U.S.A.) just after it introduced its entry to the one-plate-around (straight-only), four-page-wide class of presses and just as it inked its first full-press sale since 1990: three 4-by-1 presses to Utah's Newspaper Agency Corp., the joint operating agency for The Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret Morning News. And next April, at the drupa 2004 trade show in Germany, said Harabin, "we will be debuting our 6-by-2 product," referring to six-page-wide, two-plates-around presses (which several companies have announced, two have built, and one has sold).

In new business overseas, TKS's parent company has installed four of the 26 press lines (100 of 655 printing couples) ordered in 2002 by Japan's giant Yomiuri Shimbun. Harabin added that "we're just in the midst of installing" a big heatset press at the company's first European customer, in Portugal.

As for old business on the home front, TKS remains the lone holdout among companies named by Goss in its anti-dumping lawsuit. Without a settlement, the case is scheduled to go to trial Nov. 17. "That is completely being handled by TKS Limited," said Harabin, referring to the parent company. He has not been party to discussion of the pending litigation.
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