COLDSET UV PRINTING — LIGHT NEWS DAYS

THE NEWSPAPER industry has seen better days. Facing greater competition from Internet resources, all-news cable TV channels and free tabloid dailies, the once-venerable broadsheet business is now, itself, making headlines. Many reports on the newspaper industry involve consolidation, fire sales or massive layoffs.

Still, newspaper printers have found ways to remain profitable. One option is to produce commercial work during press downtime. Some coldset printers have added UV drying systems to their presses to enable the printing of advertising inserts and related materials.

Take Eagle Web Press of Salem, OR, for example. The company, which traces its roots to 1970, boasts a staff of more than 90 employees and 50,000 square feet of production space that runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

It is also a company that is no stranger to change. Once known as Blue Mountain Eagle Web Press, the firm's original location suffered an explosion resulting from a gas leak that destroyed the building. The company, however, endured.

Eagle Web Press was built on printing local weekly newspapers. Once making up almost 100 percent of the overall business, broadsheets now consist of less than 20 percent of today's production. Catalogs, brochures, saddlestitched books, telephone books, college class schedules, magazines and small digest books are now the norm.

"We are a newspaper plant with a large segment of our work coming from commercial accounts," notes Mike Connor, plant manager. "It is very important to us to have this work."

Coated Stock Options

The pressroom at Eagle Web Press is equipped with Goss Community S/SC units fitted with Prime UV lamps. The company utilizes inks from Flint Ink and Joules Angstrom. It has been offering the coldset UV process for two years.

"Many of our current customers have changed to printing on coated stocks with UV inks," Connor says. "We have also attracted many new customers with the technology."

The addition of UV capabilities has allowed Eagle Web Press to cash in on jobs such as grocery inserts, real estate magazines and various monthly publications, he points out. It is seen as another value-added service to offer clients.

"I think many more (coldset printers) will gravitate towards the UV process because the startup costs are a fraction of heatset," Connor predicts. "Because print buyers are demanding better and better print quality, UV will be one way to provide that to them."

Another such company is Blue Island Newspaper Printing (BINP) in Harvey, IL. The company, founded in 1971 by Gary Rice Sr. with three Goss Community units and a Suburban folder, now operates 64 units including 13 four-highs to serve three daily newspapers and numerous weekly and monthly publications.

The company recently installed a Prime UV Optimal NEWS curing system on a Goss SSC newspaper press. The company can cure Flint Ink Arrowlith UV inks on both sides of the web running at speeds up to 28,000 iph.

According to Vice President Gary Rice Jr., BINP decided to add UV because of the expanded possibilities that the UV process provides. Blue Island is now capable of printing four-color work on coated, supercalendered and newsprint stocks.

"We run a 223/4? cutoff, so we can do 81/2x11? single sheets--mostly for college covers," Rice Jr. notes. "The quality is as good as heatset. We can produce 150 line screen on the press with no trouble."

He adds that BINP has also done some newspaper inserts on the UV-equipped machine, although he doesn't really consider it an insert press. Even so, if one of his customers wants him to do inserts, he has the capability.

"If a customer wants to run a 60-lb. or 70-lb. enamel wrap, we can do that," Rice Jr. states. "It has given our company a good niche."

He reports that Goss and Prime UV have brought quite a few customers through BINP to observe the coldset UV process in action. "It looks like newspapers are now looking more seriously at this technology," BINP's vice president contends.

Just getting its feet wet in the coldset UV market is Bear River Publishing in Preston, ID. The company, which handles printing for the Logan Herald Journal, Idaho State Journal and Rexburg Standard Journal newspapers, as well as seven other publications in the Pioneer Newspaper group, has installed a Dauphin Graphic Machines (DGM) 440 four-high and a DGM 1035 folder.

"We ventured into (the UV) process after visiting three other coldset web plants using at least one tower for UV ink printing," explains Kevin Ashby, Bear River's general manager. "Visiting other facilities and talking with the press crews running UV helped us considerably. Even though their presses were different, there are many things one can learn from talking to the printers."

Drying Decisions

For drying, the company chose a Tech Lighting two-bulb system with a special reflecting surface that reportedly allows for more light to hit the sheet. It cures at speeds of 30,000-plus iph.

As far as UV inks go, Bear River has tested formulas from US Ink, Flint Ink and Ink Systems Ink, Ashby reveals.

"We had to address tack and body with all of the inks," Ashby notes. "Too much tack had the ink not releasing the paper from the blanket, which caused registration and wrap-up problems. Too little body had the ink running out of the fountains. The ink companies worked with us in formulating what we needed."

So far, the company has not decided on which UV ink it will be using in the future, he says.

"Fountain solution seems to be a bigger headache than expected," Ashby adds. "There is a lot of talk about conductivity needing to be between 1,800 and 2,400 for the UV inks to work properly. Also, we were told that we need a fountain solution that will let our water be in the 4.8 pH level to work correctly. We are still in the process of finding the correct water solution."

Bear River wants to end up with a solution that will work for both UV and regular inks so it won't have to add a separate doser for the UV tower, Ashby says.

All this said, the ability to print on coated stock has opened up all kinds of doors for Bear River.

"We print for three daily newspapers and they are seeking tab covers and single-sheet advertisements for inserting into the papers," Ashby reveals. "We are also looking at converting real estate guides to slick stock to better compete with other coated stock publications in the area."

Other publications Bear River handles also have been asking about coated paper covers and magazines, he says. "Once the word got out that we can print a quality magazine, we have been receiving calls every week inquiring about our capabilities," he explains.

Ashby concludes that the addition of the new press and offering UV printing now allows Bear River to be competitive with sheetfed and heatset web operations for newspaper-related books, magazines and covers.

"We see commercial printing as a very important factor in our financial success as a printing facility," he says. "Our problem now is balancing the needs of the papers with the commercial printing schedules to make sure we don't overbook and take away from the newspapers' flexibility to make last-minute changes and still get out on time."

A nice problem to have for any printing operation.