Firsy New Press In 15 Years At Canadian Newspapers

Fast, efficient and able to print 75,000 high quality copies an hour, a new KBA Colora press line is now operational at Metroland Printing, Publishing and Distributing in Toronto (Canada).

Fast, efficient and able to print 75,000 high quality copies an hour, a new KBA Colora press line is now operational at Metroland Printing, Publishing and Distributing in Toronto (Canada).

The press first put ink to paper two months ago.

Comprising four towers, six two-arm reelstands, two folder superstructures with four formers and two jaw folders, it is the first addition to Metroland's printing press family in 15 years and has been installed at Metroland's newly-designed facility on Tempo Avenue in North York.

Pressroom manager Bob Cole has been working with presses for more than 30 years.

He said the new KBA Colora is the best he has ever seen.

"The quality is definitely visible.

There have been no shortcomings," he said.

Plant manager Ian Duck said KBA was chosen for its willingness to work with Metroland to design a variable web width press that would improve on the division's five previous variable web width presses.

"Metroland has the ability to print on many variable web sizes and stock basis weights, combinations of tabloids and broadsheets, a large assortment of colour configurations and a variety of commercial products and there is now a 96-page stitching capacity.

This ability allows us to offer a broader range of products for our customers," Duck said.

A tabloid must have a width of 289mm but may have a variable length from 279.5mm to 406.5mm.

The Colora can print in that entire range, in one-inch increments.

A broadsheet publication has a fixed length of 578mm and a variable width of 279.5mm to 406.5mm.

Those could also be printed by the Colora, as could advertising flyers and other commercial work of a higher basis weight.

The Colora has the capacity to print 128 full-colour tabloid pages.

The maximum page count of 192 pages with 64 full-colour pages can also be achieved in one pass.

KBA said that technology was developed specifically to address the speed of the press and right from the start it could print 1.5 million copies a week - a 50 per cent increase - with the capacity to print even more.

Make-ready is said to be completed in 30 per cent less time.

Human eyes 'guesstimating' has been replaced with QTI cameras that capture tiny dots on the paper as it speeds by.

The dots are aligned exactly by independent motors.

Pointing to a fashion advertisement on an 'Oshawa This Week' newspaper, Cole said the technology: "Keeps pretty faces pretty." Shaftless drives operate different parts of the press, co-ordinated by a central computer.

That allows the Colora to be split into two separate presses and print two jobs independently.

"We've never had versatility of this magnitude before," Duck said.

A wholly owned subsidiary of Torstar Corporation, a media company whose businesses include 'The Toronto Star', Metroland publishes 65 newspapers with a total of 110 editions, centred around Toronto and southern Ontario.

Combined distribution of Metroland's community titles is around 4.5 million copies per week.

It is also one of the biggest distributors of flyers in the region, with over two billion pieces per year.

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