Baldwin Blanket Cleaners For Australian News Group

The News Limited Group in Australia has confirmed its confidence in Baldwin technology following an order for 66 double width Impact Global automatic blanket cleaning systems.

The News Limited Group in Australia has confirmed its confidence in Baldwin technology following an order from its subsidiary, the Adelaide Advertiser, for 66 double width Impact Global automatic blanket cleaning systems.

The Baldwin equipment will be retrofitted to three 1,620mm MAN Newsman press lines, with installation starting in February 2007.

The News Limited Group already operates Impact Global systems on newspaper presses at sites in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne.

The tabloid Adelaide Advertiser has a daily circulation of 210,000 and its weekend circulation is 340,000, with a pagination of between 96pages -128 pages.

Blankets on the MAN lines are currently cleaned manually and the installation of the Impact Global system will improve productivity and health and safety at the site, according to Baldwin.

Peter Tkachuk, managing director of Baldwin Graphic Equipment, said: "Australia has stringent health and safety guidelines and the Impact Global system provides a completely automated means of cleaning press blankets, eliminating the need for operator intervention.

In addition, printers are increasingly seeking more environmentally-friendly processes and the unique Prepac cloth used with the Impact system has helped to make Baldwin blanket cleaning technology extremely attractive." Because the Prepac cloth contains the exact amount of cleaning agent to clean the blanket there is no need for pumps or containers for liquid solvent, whilst the extremely low VOC consumption makes Impact an environmentally-friendly cleaning system, said Baldwin.

Once a set of blankets have been cleaned the Prepac cloth is automatically moved on so each blanket is presented with fresh cloth, which ensures a high level of cleaning and reduced make-ready times.

The system is also claimed to easy to install and maintain, whilst changing a used roll of cloth takes only a few minutes.

Barry Johnson, group technical manager at News Limited Australia, commented: "Throughout the group we have almost 900 press cylinders that are cleaned automatically on a daily basis by Baldwin Impact systems.

We've had experience of Baldwin's automatic cleaning technology since 1994 and this is now used on all our major press sites throughout Australia.

The primary benefits to us, as the Australian division of News Corporation, is to meet the occupational health and safety issues prevalent in today's work environment and to achieve productivity gains resulting from faster press turn-around times." Jay Clarke, the plant manager at Adelaide, added: "We were impressed by the low maintenance and ease of operation of the Impact Global system.

The system has few moving parts and there is no need to fit pumping facilities to get blanket wash to the units, so installation is more straight forward.

Several sites within the group have retrofitted Impact Global blanket cleaning to MAN presses and we've been able to speak to them about their experiences.

Impact is a tried and tested system that has proved its worth.

Baldwin has also been very helpful throughout all our negotiations.".

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