NWN is producing 440 plates an hour with four Agfa Graphics CtP plate lines in full production
Tags:
Nationwide News (NWN) of News Ltd, the Australian arm of News Corp and Australia’s largest newspaper publisher, has completed the conversion of its Chullora print centre to an all-digital prepress and platemaking workflow from Agfa Graphics. Agfa says its solutions are being used to produce Australia’s biggest-selling titles, such as the Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph and the Australian.The NWN installation includes four :Polaris platesetters with full :Arkitex production software for use with :N91v violet photopolymer plates. The investment in hardware and software alone is worth A$2.9m. This brings the total number of :Polaris and :Arkitex systems in use with News Ltd to eight, with an additional six to be installed in the course of the year. News Ltd uses approx. 900,000sqm of Agfa plates per year and is Agfa Graphics’ largest newspaper account in Australia.
According to NWN, significant improvements in workflow efficiency, waste management and cost containment have been among the benefits of the conversion.
“Because of the volume of work going through our plateroom and the increases we expected, we knew we had to rethink our entire production process,” says Jim Nally, general manager of NWN’s Chullora print centre.
“We are very pleased that NWN selected our products and system solutions for full editorial-to-press integration. NWN’s complex production processes have evolved into an advanced, straightforward, and very accurate single-system,” says Agfa Graphics’ director of newspaper sales, Hans Gerinckx.
“There was a learning curve for most of us, but everyone is very comfortable now and we are already seeing the benefits,” says Brett Cleary, NWN’s CtP maintenance supervisor.
“We are producing 440 plates per hour with four plate lines in full production, and that helps us meet our deadlines.”
