The A$70m-plus package encompasses 24 reelstands, 24 towers with a total of 192 couples, six folders and automated reel handling systems, installation work on which will commence early next year. The presses will follow in spring and summer 2006.
Ian Law, WANH managing director and CEO, says, “We spent a lot of time checking out the options and finally came down in favour of KBA because they offered a customised product and first-class support.
“The combination of double-width Colora and single-width Comet allows plenty of room for growth. The two heatset towers will have two separate ink pumping systems so we can run inks with different viscosities, say for smooth or matt paper. We think the combination will offer a much broader choice in terms of the types of products we can publish for our own newspapers, or for external customers.”
The flagship publication of WANH is The West Australian, the state’s only daily newspaper, first published in 1833.
The West Australian, has a current circulation of 210,000 copies for its weekday editions and 385,000 for its Saturday edition, which has more than one million readers and averages around 500 pages.
WANH also publishes 19 regional newspapers across the state, and prints publications for a range of external customers. Its business activities include web offset commercial printing and radio communications.
In addition, it owns 50 per cent of the Hoyts Cinema group, which operates 431 cinema screens across Australia and New Zealand. The Hoyts operation includes Hoyts Distribution and Val Morgan Advertising.
The KBA Colora four-high tower press line will be engineered for a 578mm cut-off, a web width variable between 1220mm and 1728mm and a maximum rated output of 75,000 copies per hour. Its flexible configuration allows ribbons to be assigned to different formers, according to job specifications.
The Comet semi-commercial press will have the same cut-off and a maximum web width of 1000mm.
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