Eighteen months of fully-automated press control has paid dividends for Swedish publisher Sydostpressarna.

The Karlskrona-based company is part of Gota-Media, which owns 11 national dailies and a group of regional weeklies with a strongly regional focus.

QI Press Controls mRC-3D system for colour register, IDS for colour control (including humidity control) and IQM reporting tool was installed on a manroland Geoman in January 2014. Plant manager Jan-Åke Lundgren said the company had been looking for technology to enable it to cut down on labour.

Results have shown a one-third reduction in waste in addition to a saving of one fulltime job. Lundgren says savings in materials used and staffing continue and quality has improved markedly. Although ink levels are now stable, savings have not yet been achieved, but Lundgren attributes thi to much-improved image resolution.

Reliability is exceptional, "so reliable in fact that the operator is standing around for much of the time," he says, and printers have awarded the system a 'gold medal' as "the best printer we have ever seen".