The new Goss caps a remarkable seven years for AIW (Australian Independent Web), which only started business in 2001 in the wake of the Diamond Press debacle, with one web, a CTP and a handful of staff. The original owners had a strategy of production automation, which has clearly worked well. AIW is currently thought to be number four in the domestic heatset world, behind PMP, IPMG and Franklin, and is now owned by a private equity fund.
The new Goss is the fourth at AIW, and at 80pp is bigger than any installed by its main rivals PMP, IPMG, Blue Star, Franklin or Cadillac. It will add significantly to Australian heatset capacity – it is capable of printing several million A4 pages an hour – a capacity which will be expanded even more significantly when IPMG’s new $150m Warwick Farm site comes on stream.
Peter Clark CEO of AIW says, “We have grown our business by always investing in the latest, automated technology available for prepress, printing and finishing. We are always looking for efficiencies with production and technology that is the most environmentally sound on the market. The new Sunday press is the latest example, and we look forward to passing on the print quality, productivity, environmental and efficiency advantages of this high-pagination system to our customers.”
Crews at AIW put ink on paper with the new press on August 6. “We appreciate the skill and the professionalism Goss International brought to the installation process,” Clark says. “Our teams have worked very well together, and that teamwork was the key ingredient in the on-time start-up of this large, technologically advanced press system.”
Clark says that the Goss Ecocool dryer supplied with the new Sunday press and the waste reduction features throughout the system, especially the gapless technology with its beneficial paper savings, support AIW’s focus on reducing environmental impact. The advanced afterburner technology of the Ecocool dryer optimises the use of the evaporated waste ink solvents to fuel the drying process, thus substantially reducing emissions as well as fossil fuel consumption.
AIW was the first heatset web printer to use captured rainwater from its factory roof in the production process and is boosting this storage capacity from 200,000 to 500,000 litres. AIW has also pioneered the use of 100-percent recycled papers for catalog and magazine production.
AIW was the first web offset printer to be awarded the Gold Award in the Printing Innovation category at the Annual National Print Awards.
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