A six-tower KBA Commander newspaper press capable of heatset production will boost capacity at Jordan Press Foundation in Amman. Part of a US$33 million project, the new double-width press equipped for newspapers, semicommercials and hybrid products should be running by the end of next year. JPF publishes leading Arabic national daily ‘Al Rai’, as well as the English-language ‘Jordan Times’ and the ‘Hatem’ monthly magazine for children and youngsters. The project is understood to be the biggest investment to date by a Jordanian media company in newspaper technology. According to chairman Fahed Fanek it will enable the company to consolidate its pole position in the market and sustain profitable growth in the future: “With the high-powered KBA Commander we can offer our readers, advertisers and print customers full-colour newspapers, supplements and other print products with still greater visual appeal and immediacy.” Technical committee chairman and commercial press manager Amjad Ayesh says the heatset capability will allow production of semicommercial and hybrid copies on newsprint and improved paper. “While we’ll be exploiting these options and the new press line’s productivity for our own titles, we’ll also be accepting contract work to shorten the payback time.” The press will have a 578 mm cut-off and maximum web width of 1520 mm, printing straight at up to 80,000 cph. In heatset mode there will be a choice of web widths from 1260-1520 mm. It will print up to 96 broadsheet (or 192 tabloid) pages in full colour, with 16 broadsheet or 32 tabloid pages running through the heatset dryer.