Web Offset: Shorter Runs, Technology Innovations Enable Competitiveness in a New Print World

In a world of short run lengths, personalization, and fast turnaround, can the industry’s traditional behemoths, commercial and newspaper web presses, continue to compete?

Absolutely, according to industry leaders. Companies like Goss International, MAN Roland, and other web press makers are pursuing innovations that can enable web printers not merely to stay viable but to compete vigorously for more kinds of business than ever before. While most web press print production is advertising-driven, changing trends in the marketplace are reshaping the business model.

Traditionally, web presses offer significant advantages. They’re extremely fast and productive, and paper cost for a web run can be as much as 20 percent less than that of cut sheets. Moreover, web presses deliver finished 16- or 32-page signatures, or larger, accommodating an enormous range of publishing and advertising needs. Yet vendors and printers alike recognize that business revisioning and technical enhancements are vital if webs are to compete, domestically and internationally, for their share of a hugely and increasingly diverse marketing communications “spend.”

While a host of new media tools are rapidly emerging to compete for advertising budgets, a recently completed study by the Print Industries Market Information and Research Organization (PRIMIR) found that print run lengths in many important segments are not declining much. In such areas as mass circulation magazines, special interest magazines, newspapers, commercial printing, packaging and catalogs, overall run lengths are expected to remain fairly stable through 2011.

Still, PRIMIR saw an “explosion” in short run printing, brought about largely by clients’ realization that it has become economical to print in run lengths that were never realistic before. Handling shorter run lengths economically will enable printers to attract their share of these new jobs, which can include more customized and personalized work than in the past. And this trend is extending into the web offset world. One need only look toward the book business and other industry sectors where shorter, targeted, and versioned runs are coming into play more than in the past.

“Web presses are reaching down into run lengths that people have not previously associated with webs,” says Bob Brown, CEO of Goss International. “There used to be a cleaner run-length break between sheetfed and web jobs, but the gray area is getting larger.”

“On commercial web presses today, we have customers sometimes running down to 5,000 impressions, which is amazing,” agrees Vincent Lapinski, Chief Operating Officer, Web Operations North America, MAN Roland. “No one ever thought you would see that on a web press.”

Technology enhancements are also driving greater efficiency in web press environments. While this has long been evident on the commercial heat set web side, where vendors have focused for years on improving productivity through shortening makeready and job-to-job changeover times, the trend has gained considerable momentum in the newspaper pressroom as well.

“Newspapers are focusing on efficiency and workflow integration to take costs out of their production, much as the commercial side of the business has been doing for years,” says Lapinski. “Now it’s all about automation and bringing computer integrated manufacturing to newspaper production.” He points to CIM projects that MAN Roland has been driving in the U.S. and Europe through the integration of its flagship automation system, printnet, including a recent major order for printnet at The New York Times and one in Denver, in which the client will see a return on investment within a year’s time.

Reducing manpower requirements in the web pressroom is an important part of the competitive strategy, particularly in regions like the U.S., where labor is expensive. American printers increasingly find themselves competing with companies overseas, and differences in labor costs can often be decisive. Consequently, manufacturers have been exploring different technical paths to get more production out of press time while reducing personnel required to run the equipment.

MAN Roland has been active in developing direct digital imaging on press, while Goss’s product strategy has stressed offline imaging using CTP, coupled with automatic plate changing. Another trend for both companies is “non-stop” makeready. June 2006 saw the first installation of what Goss terms the world’s first web press equipped with Automatic Transfer to complete four-color job changeovers without stopping the press.

Basically, the Automatic Transfer (AT) system enables an eight-unit web press to continue printing one job on four of its units while makeready proceeds for the next job on the other four units. The changeover from job to job is accomplished while the press is running at production speed. This technology increases the initial cost of a printing system, of course. But this initial outlay can be recouped through savings in makeready times. For example, a print shop with an average run of 50,000 copies may do an average of a dozen makereadies each day, with each process requiring 20 minutes. If these separate makereadies can be eliminated, the daily savings is roughly four hours.

Innovations in plant automation also impact materials handling throughout the pressroom production chain. Vince Lapinski cites MAN Roland’s extensive work in inventory control and material logistics, encompassing the flow of paper, ink, and other supplies moving from the loading dock to wherever they are needed in the plant. “We’re seeing this technology becoming more prevalent in big commercial plants,” he says, “not only on the back end of the machine, where good things have been done with robotics, but also on the front end.”

Another major technical trend in the web offset world centers on convergence between newspaper and commercial applications. Newspapers, Goss’s Bob Brown says, are expanding their range to “do more of the things commercial printers do in order to be successful.” Vince Lapinski adds that “we see more of our presses sold to newspapers being used for directory work and other commercial applications, thanks to their versatility to be able to print at quality levels on a number of different stocks.”

This convergence is particularly prevalent in Europe and Asia, where traditional newspaper businesses have long been thriving and evolving. In Asia, new publications are springing up continuously and investing aggressively in modern web equipment for production. Contributing to this phenomenon is the spread of literacy and affluence in societies like China.

Much of the value-add being created by web printers comes in the finishing realm, where newspaper publishers are moving quickly to adopt new, automated systems to handle advertising inserts, zoned distribution, and other functions at full press speed. On the commercial printing side, companies are delivering more saddle stitching, adhesive binding, and similar capabilities to support customized content in shorter press runs.

The surging presence of internet-based advertising and marketing, from online catalogs and buy sites to worldwide classifieds on craigslist.com, is certainly reshaping market spending in every sector. Web press manufacturers and their customers alike know that they have an active stake in driving the R.O.I. of print within a multimedia world – and their outlook is optimistic. “Print volume is going to continue to grow, driven by growth in ad spending,” says Bob Brown. “We see a lot of opportunity to use automation and new technology to bring web into promising new areas.”

“Ten years from now, we can expect more consolidation within the industry, but you’ll also still see the presence of strong independent printers who have niches they are very successful in,” predicts Lapinski. “With all kinds of new applications emerging in both newspaper and commercial, printers who are progressive with their investments today will certainly be better positioned for the future.”