IFRA

WAN-IFRA: What newspapers and other products do you print on your newspaper presses and what are the circulations?
KOOS TAMMINGA: We print around the clock: three daily regional newspapers, 40 weeklies as well as commercials. The newspapers have a combined circulation of 260,000 copies per day. In total, we print about 300 million newspapers a year.

WAN-IFRA: What was the main reason for ordering web cleaning and blanket washing devices for your presses?
TAMMINGA: The reasons were less paper dust and less cleaning of the blankets. Cleaning is a tough job, hard for the shoulders; our people had a lot of problems with that.

WAN-IFRA: Have the new systems made a big difference regarding the cleaning intervals?
TAMMINGA: The web cleaning device is kind of a vacuum cleaner that sucks constantly on the web while printing. To avoid problems with paper dust, before we had to clean the rubber blankets every eight hours. Now, the blankets are washed twice a week.

WAN-IFRA: What are your experiences with the new systems regarding print quality, time savings, manual processes, waste?
TAMMINGA: It’s hard to compare it with the old situation, but in my opinion it is better/it has improved as the cleaning is reduced and we have a more stable process. I’m not sure however if those aspects/improvements are only due to the web cleaning and blanket washing.

WAN-IFRA: When will these devices have paid-off?
TAMMINGA: The time for the return on investment will be about three years.