By: E&P Staff Hometown News Inc., Woodruff, S.C., has ordered an Orient Super 4-Hi tower and an Orient X-Cel 2:2 jaw folder in 35 -inch web width from Printers House Americas LLC, Roswell, Ga. It is the third order the company has placed for Orient equipment.
The new tower and folder, slated for installation in May by Printers House technicians, will be additions to an existing 22-inch cutoff Orient Super press. The new equipment will be part of a press line rearrangement that will allow Hometown News to double its production speed to as much as 32,000 impression per hour, add four more pages of process color on each eight-page broadsheet section, and significantly cut the number of press runs required to print its newspapers.
The original and new folders, the modified press line can be operated two separate presses.
Hometown News' South Carolina eight weeklies are the Woodruff, Whitmire, and Spartanburg County News, Blacksburg, Inman and Middle Tyger Times, Boiling Springs Sentry, The Greer Citizen, and Chesnee Tribune in the Spartanburg-Greenville area. The company has depended on Orient press equipment since purchasing three mono units, a three-color unit and a standard folder in1999.
By that year, acquisitions and start-ups required more speed and capacity, according to Hometown CEO Donald Wilder, who said the Orient was chosen for the "advantages of having new equipment that was uncomplicated and easy to maintain - but at a reasonable cost." Further growth occasioned the addition of a mono unit in 2005. The latest investment is needed to meet volume that has increased from 60,000 impressions in 1999 to 300,000 today.
Hometown's papers average three to four sections, but can run to five to six for special issues and during the peak Christmas advertising season. (With the group's common section and local community sections, advertisers can reach as many or few communities as needed.) Sections are now limited to 12 pages when using three colors and a spot color. The new tower and folder will enable Hometown News to print four more pages of back-to-back process color, for a total of six process-color pages in a 20-page section.
"Our advertisers know where their customers are coming from," Wilder said. "Our philosophy is that they should not have to spend large amounts of money advertising in areas where they are unlikely to get customers."
The Orient 4-Hi has motorized register with control at the console, provision for auto register, solid stainless steel plate and blanket cylinders, automatic grease lubrication, and swing-down, lever-keyed ink fountains. Segmented ink blades control of ink and ink-setting accuracy. Rollstands feature pneumatically powered roll lifts and disk brakes. Pneumatic web tension control enhances register for consistent print quality.
The X-Cel folder delivers half and quarter page folds, is equipped with double nips and air former boards and can operate at speeds in excess of 36,000 cph. It also has provision for cross perforation and double parallel folds.
The press is manufactured by The Printers House at its Ballabgarh factory, near New Delhi, India. The company maintains a parts supply depot in Canton, Ga., for its North American customers.
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