MAN Roland Sells Regioman in Italy, India

By: E&P Staff MAN Roland announced orders for four more 75,000-copy-per-hour Regioman 4-by-1 presses -- three from the Italian financial paper Il Sole 24 Ore and another soon be delivered to the Times of India in Bangalore.

Since introducting the press four years ago, MAN has sold more than 1,000 Regioman couples, representing 31 presses to customers in eight countries. U.S. sites account for almost half the sales, with nine of those presses now operating. Last summer, MAN established a "practice-oriented" training center in Arlington Heights, Ill., eliminating language barriers and reducing customer travel time.

A French customer, Groupe Amaury, bought six identical machines, commissioned within nine months of each other, to decentalize printing L'Equipe and Aujourd'hui (the national edition of Le Parisien). Each press has four eight-couple towers, five reel splicers and a folder, allowing the papers to be printed entirely in four-color most days.

The doublewide, one-page-around "straight-only" press suits newspapers with regional editions. Such presses can produce sections in even or uneven numbers, and section page counts may change in two-page increments. They also require half the number of plates used by a two-around doublewide.