New benefits from CTP for US publisher

CTP solution for Community Shoppers brings new efficiency for the print operation.

For over 50 years, households in the southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois area have come to expect their twice-weekly Community Shoppers newspapers.

What started out as a promotional outlet for local businesses has grown into one of the area's most informative news services.

Until last December, Community Shoppers (CSI) had resisted investing in a CTP solution until they could benefit from a completely digital workflow.

Less than a year later, CTP has allowed them to reallocate 4 of 5 prepress staffers, increase throughput, and improve production quality.

Today, CSI produces over 250,000 newspapers and have an audited readership reach of over 480,000 in the region.

In addition, they also print another 250,000 newspaper and magazine products (on average) for regional publisher clients.

For more information about CSI, go to www.communityshoppers.com.

For more than 28 years, CSI has been a loyal customer of The Oldham Group, a Springfield Illinois-based graphic arts solutions provider.

"CSI has always demanded the most efficient technology available, and their standards have never allowed them to compromise," noted Mark Kaufman, Electronic Prepress Sales, The Oldham Group.

"For example, we literally worked for over a year to find a system that would allow them to digitally paginate their newspapers.

After 50 years, their readers have come to expect quality publishing delivered on time.

The ECRM platesetter completed their search for an efficient digital workflow." CSI Production Workflow Community Shopper's production workflow is made up of 12 Macintosh-based design stations, equipped with Managing Editor pagination software, feeding a Harlequin RIP-based ECRM 4matic CTP platesetter.

Producing over 1,500 Kodak VioletNews plates per month (at 1200 dpi and 95 LPI), CSI is able to print an average of well over a half-million newspapers and magazine products per week on their 14-unit Tensor web press.

Their local-community news and classified papers serve South Central Wisconsin.

Community Shoppers Quote "Printers struggle with the effects of variation throughout the production process, from prepress to final presswork," notes CSI General Manager Dan Pyfer.

"This variation robs the printer of the ability to maintain the consistent quality needed to provide customers with the best possible product in the most efficient manner possible.

By eliminating film in platemaking, computer-to-plate workflows remove the last remaining non-digital step before the press, delivering on the promise of 'digital image integrity'.

Success with CTP ultimately depends on imaging plates accurately and consistently, despite the normal plate and imaging tolerances and variations that exist in real-world production environments." "ECRM has impressed us with their durability, dependability and reliability, added Production Manager Dave Chvilicek.

"Just as important, they lived up to their word.

They promised to deliver a plug-n-play system and within a few days we were up and running.

We kept our old Agfa Avantra imagesetter around for a couple of months, as a backup, but we never used it and eventually sold it on the secondary market.

The MAKO 4matic has been excellent.

We used to use 3 full time and 2 part-time employees.

With the ECRM platesetter, we've been able to reallocate 4 of the 5 people to other departments [80% reduction in direct costs].

In addition, we've seen significant throughput increases, sharper halftone reproduction, less plate remakes, and the elimination of stripping.

Every single member of our 40 prepress and press department staffers has benefited from CTP.".

Back to top