Waterless printing: Choose it – as Belgian publisher De Persgroep uncompromisingly did – for superior print quality and its low environmental footprint ... or dismiss it as some have, as an idea too far ahead of its time. What’s clear however, is that as more industrial-scale installations fire up, a tipping point for waterless newspapers is approaching. German press manufacturer KBA, which launched the waterless Cortina press at DRUPA in 2000, has sold 74 of the compact four-high towers, 39 of which are now in operation. Almost a third of these are at De Persgroep’s Eco Print Centre at Lokeren, near Brussels, while ten more – triple-width this time – are part of a two-press line for ‘Le Figaro’ in Paris, and a further 14 (in a four-dryer configuration) are set for a 2010 start-up at ‘Gulf News’ in Dubai. And with the specific mass, comes not only user experience, but a realisation on the part of suppliers that they must address the needs of this growing technology or risk being left behind. Plates and ink are key components in the waterless mix, but users have waited long for a suitable alternative plate to come to market, and ink quality suffers from lack of dedicated manufacturing resources. But every innovation requires the support and commitment of users who believe in it, and KBA is fortunate to have these at Lokeren, where I was able to talk to EPC technical director Wim Maes during DRUPA 2008. Maes is now able to look back with satisfaction, not only on the completion of the project, but on the way in which teething problems have been overcome. The showplace plant – officially opened just before the Düsseldorf show – not only works well but has scored a rare environmental award from the Belgian Groen (Green) party. Behind the project is another believer, Persgroep managing director Rudy Bertels, whose vision it was. Faced with the challenge of building print and colour capacity by adding a fifth press to the ageing line-up at its Asse, Brussels, plant, he saw opportunities – including the format change to Berliner – in replacing all the presses at once. Established in 1984, the Asse plant had been extended three times to meet growth needs of group newspapers including the multi-edition regional daily ‘Het Laatste Nieuws’. Bertels says the necessary impetus was automatic plate changing ... a productivity booster which would avoid the need for five presses, which was packaged as part of KBA’s waterless Cortina. The decision to go waterless when only a couple of companies had already done so, was taken on the grounds of quality: With waterless, dot gain drops from 28 per cent to eight per cent, “and the more accurate the dot, the sharper the picture”. The presses would also print both newspapers and heatset semicommercial work. At 110 million Euros ($214 million) the new plant was the most expensive option, “but also the best,” he says. There must however, have been times when those beliefs were stretched to the limit. It had always been the intention to phase the installation process. Equipment for the first of these was ordered in January 2004, when building groundworks began. This included three press towers, a folder and one dryer. The first commercial production in March 2006 – and the move of the 70,000 circulation national daily ‘De Morgen’ to the plant – came after print trials the previous December, and was followed by six months’ “evaluation” during problems were identified. Only after this was the rest of the pressline ordered, to bring it to the present 12 towers, four folders and a dryer (with provision for two more towers and three more ovens). Production of ‘Het Laatste Nieuws’, which has 21 editions totalling 360,000 copies, switched to Lokeren in January this year. “In the beginning, we had to struggle,” Maes admits. “We suffered trouble with the development.” But he says contacts he made in Japan in the mid-1990s, when he had supervised the installation of the first Mitsubishi newspaper press in Europe, stood him in good stead. “This had put me in touch with the teams in Japan, where waterless printing had existed small-scale for many years,” he says. “As a result of these connections, I was able to go back to Japan in June 2006 and study some of the plants there to learn what we had done wrong.” Maes says with De Persgroep the first company needing waterless inks for high-volume printing, there were supply problems. Additionally most makers were running conventional ink through their manufacturing facilities on some days, and waterless on others, leading to contamination. “I had been told that contamination of five per cent was acceptable, but we found that even one per cent was bad,” he says. Even now, Maes says there is “a way to go”, but a strategy of using Japanese Toka ink as a quality reference, against supplies from European makers Flint, Huber and Sun is paying off. Ink from Siegwerk and Asian suppliers DIC and Toyo has also been used. The Japanese experience brought needed progress, with cooperation with all suppliers “very positive”, Maes says. And he points out that even after 40 years, inks used in conventional wet-offset are still an issue, with ink mist one of the key problems. Other changes to the process – some due to “our own mistakes” – mean production at Lokeren is still not optimal. “We are planning to make use of experience gained in the processing industry, optimising cooling with cooling towers at 9/12/24°C (instead of 9/24°C) and heating with heat recovery and lower temperatures ... 55-60°C instead of the 80°C used at the beginning.” The keyless, waterless design means there are no ‘piano’ controls on the press, “only + and – (temperature) making prepress very important,” says Maes. “It needs to be top quality.” As at the Cortina site at ‘Badische Zeitung’, waste diverters close automatically at 100 copies. An initial decision not to install register control on presses has been modified with the use of Italian Grafikontrol colour and cut-off equipment on the heatset press. However, he says the absence of ink fly means maintenance is lower and the highest level of automation is possible. The short web paths of the compact design means there is no fanout; with no dampening there is no dot gain and no web breaks caused by water; and the 1500 mm roll diameter results in 44 per cent fewer splices. Upstream, barcoded rolls are unloaded from trucks with an automatic Joloda system and deployed using KBA Patras with its Rocla guided vehicles, all linked to an ABB printing management system. Splice preparation is manual, as Maes says “we didn’t see a system that didn’t need a guy on it”. Plates come from a bank of Kodak thermal platesetters – teamed with Nela optical punches and a KBA plate washing system – using Toray plates, and with Kodak being trialled. A two-dimensional (QR) barcode identifies the press position for each plate. “It used to take 15-20 minutes for a platechange, and now we change during the run,” Maes says. Plate life of 200,000 copies with heatset, and probably 150,000 on newsprint is “no problem”. The coldset needs some time to dry (two or three hours’ oxidisation), but its resistance to smearing has brought compliments from readers. Apart from the productivity – expected to double that of its predecessor – reductions in manning (three to a press at EPC against six before) means training is simpler. The Cortina design also includes features such as automatic setting of roller locks and nip pressure. Maes is convinced waterless is the ideal way to standardise and industrialise printing of newspapers and semicommercials: “It makes the life of a printer much simpler, and work more reproducible and economical than in the past”. At DRUPA, KBA marketing director Klaus Schmidt claimed ‘total cost’ comparisons between the waterless Cortina press and conventional presses showed savings of between seven and 12 per cent. With interests in TV, radio and online publishing, De Persgroep is a typical modern multimedia company. In 2006, it reorganised its business to bring newspapers, magazines, advertising and online activities into a single entity with annual turnover of 240 million Euros. Among magazines are the saddlestitched ‘Nina’ and ‘De Morgen Magazine’, as well as products such as ‘Vacature’ and ‘Dag Strips’ which are perfect bound. One emphatic need was the ability to print these heatset, as well as other semicommercial and contract work. Group newspapers, totalling about 450-500k copies every night, from Sunday to Friday, currently account for only a quarter of production capacity, with the rest available for magazines and commercial work The same ink is used for both newspaper and heatset printing, and there’s a trend towards standardisation of paper stocks. “Tests on hybrid production have been a success, and the idea now is to put one 150 gsm heatset web with two or three coldset,” Maes says. During my visit a 32-page section for ‘Nina’ was being produced. The 940 mm cylinder circumference and 1260 mm maximum web width yield a ‘half-Berliner’ magazine signature which trims to a slightly-wider-than-A4 format not unlike GXpress. The Ferag mailroom is also advanced and automated, including an exchange module to allow any folder to feed either of the two inserting lines. Typically, two lines run direct and two buffered. Another objective has been lower environmental loads. Awareness of environmental issues is high in Europe, and with ‘green purchase standards’ and models in the paper industry with FSC, PFSC and recycled papers, Bertels wanted the best possible outcomes. The EPC plant – so named to emphasise its green credentials – is scoring on a number of fronts: Waterless printing plates are seen as environmentally friendly, developed with water and used without the IPA or ‘replacers’ of conventional offset. Waste figures are “tremendously lower” with the even use of items such as cleaning cloths down by 50 per cent (and the benefit of less maintenance having to be done by operators). Maes says trials with water-washable inks are ongong, and will bring less VOC. The state-of-the-art 30,000m2 building on an 8.9 hectare brownfield site, uses a Siemens system for ‘totally integrated power’ which optimises energy management, and has brought a 30 per cent reduction in gas and electricity bills. All of these improvements have been underlined by the Groen Party award, made for ecological innovation and presented to the EPC team by the party’s leader. In the pressroom, a tall banner proclaims the theme of ‘Printing tomorrow’ ... and on the floor, a painstaking, committed approach is making waterless the success it deserves to be.