The towers are equipped with UV curing systems from Prime UV and are often used to produce coated covers and inserts.
The Fairfax-owned Express has just added two towers to its existing press and is expecting a third to be up and running by late October, once it arrives in the country from the US-based manufacturer Dauphin Graphic Machines (DGM).
The press is being reconfigured as three four-high towers and will print the newspaper as well as some commercial work.
General manager, Ross Rose says: “They will eventually give us 24 broadsheet pages, 16 of which will be colour in one pass.”
The paper has also just installed a new SSC Folder which he says will enable it to double its running speed.
It isn’t the first sale of DGM press equipment in New Zealand according to the New Zealand agent, Tauranga based Webco Ltd which services the South Pacific and parts of South East Asia.
Webco managing director Brendon Whitley says there are several newspapers in New Zealand now running DGM equipment. The equipment fits in with existing press units.
“We handle a large range of newspaper equipment, but the majority of our business is press rebuilding,” he adds.
The Marlborough Express has been publishing since April 1866, servicing a diverse province stretching from the Marlborough Sounds to the Molesworth high country and the Kaikoura region.
It was sold in October 1998 by Roger and Carol Rose, family interests of the Furness family to Independent Newspapers Ltd, and the business came under the ownership of Fairfax Media in 2003. Mr Rose remains the newspaper’s general manager, having succeeded his father-in-law, the late Don Furness, as manager in the 1980s.
The Furness family have been associated with the paper since 1879, buying it from founder Samuel Johnson.
In 1982, the whole plant, now completely computerised and using offset printing, was re-established in the company’s former printing premises. Since then, there has been a policy of progressively upgrading plant and technology. The paper was the first in the country to move wholly to digital photography in 1998.
