Nela Expands to Meet Demand

By: E&P Staff Plate-line equipment manufacturer Nela has increased staffing in customer-service and manufacturing and added 20,000 square feet of production and product-support space to its Oakdale, Minn., facility, near St. Paul, in response to rising business volume.

Nela President David Klein said the expansion was undertaken "to assure our customers that delivery of our American-manufactured products is within their time frame requirements."

In September, The Ledger in Lakeland, Fla., will install one Nela VCP vision bender in line with two Agfa Advantage computer-to-plate imaging lines, and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale will install two VCP vision benders in line with existing conventional plate lines at its Deerfield Beach plant.

Mount Rose Publishing Co. in Carson City, Nevada, ordered a VCP for connection to two Agfa Advantage CTP devices with barcode reader and smaller-footprint, four-position stackers, for which plates will be rotated before stacking so that the lead of the plate is always stacked first.

Other recent orders were placed by: the Greeley (Colo.) Daily Tribune (to handle plates for Goss Community and Urbanite presses, one Nela VCP connected to two Agfa Advantage imagers with barcode reader and two-position stackers); The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash. (two Nela VCP vision punch/benders for use with two conventional plate exposure units but ready for conversion to CTP and a 50-inch web); and the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, S.D. (VCP connected to two KPG Newssetter thermal platesetters, with a Nela loader that will separate plates from slipsheets and deliver plates into both imagers).

At the Daily Gazette and Sauk Valley Sunday in Sterling, Ill., Nela converted the Urbanite press with its tool-less lock-up for tighter register and faster make-ready and start-up. The Korean Central Daily in Los Angeles, and The Express-Times in Easton, Pa., also converted to tool-less lock-up.