The News Group, owned by Australian media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, has big plans. A new era in terms of print quality and productivity is about to dawn for the newspapers “The Times”, “The Sunday Times”, “The Sun” and “News of the World”.
And for this MAN Roland is to deliver 22 COLORMAN format XXL web offset presses with a price tag of more than 300 million euros, along with a fully-automated AUROSYS reel handling system. And since the first format XXL COLORMAN presslines were installed in the Augsburger Allgemeine’s printing plant earlier this year, the representatives from News International wanted to see this new technology in action.
“We’ve been receiving one delegation after the other in Augsburg from News wanting to see their presses being manufactured and test prints of all their products,” explained Wolfgang Malcher, Area Sales Manager at MAN Roland. One delegation came from “The Times” headed by Leslie Hinton, CEO of News International Ltd. The visitors toured the MAN Roland production facilities as well as the Augsburger Allgemeine’s printing plant in the industrial area close by.
“The fact that we are trailblazers for international newspaper groups makes us rather proud,” says Eike Bühring, Deputy Technical Manager of the Augsburger Allgemeine’s printing operations where five presses are to be installed by the end of 2006. What interested the News International delegations above all was how the modern printing technology performs under real-life conditions. “Our productivity is high and our print quality is excellent,” reports Bühring. And the guests from England were impressed.
