The volumes are impressive: Approx. 650 million inserts are placed yearly into a wide range of newspaper titles at the Axel Springer printing house in Berlin-Spandau. Half are inserted in nine daily and five Sunday newspapers using nine NewsLiners, while the other half are inserted in two weeklies with 46 part editions in all using two ProLiner/CoLiners. “Although the number of inserts in daily newspapers has declined, there has been an upwards trend for inserts in weekly newspapers for years,” says Claus Pengel, plant manager of the Axel Springer printing house in Berlin-Spandau.

The up to 33 part editions of Berliner Wochenblatt, which are published in the Nordic tabloid format for the Berlin area, have a total circulation of 1.53 million copies and are divided into around 1,500 different allocation units (see also article on page 4 of this issue). In addition, the weekend supplement of Berliner Morgenpost has a circulation of 1.35 million copies with 13 split run editions. Printing and print finishing of Berliner Woche were relocated from an external printing plant to Berlin-Spandau at the beginning of this year. “That enables us to improve our capacity utilization and increase the economic attractiveness of our printing house,” explains Pengel.

With nine NewsLiners, the Spandau printing house already had large inserting capacities in its vast mailroom, which boasts the dimensions of a soccer field. Yet the inserting systems of Muller Martini, which are all equipped with a main section feeder, two pre-printed section feeders, three insert feeders and a card feeder, were coming up against their limits because of the additional printing of advertisement newspapers.

Up to 15 inserts
“The production of daily newspapers and advertising newspapers partially overlaps,” says Pengel. “We produce advertising newspapers nonstop on Monday/Tuesday and Thursday/Friday for up to 36 hours. Moreover, the weekly newspapers each have an average of six to ten inserts – at peak times, this can reach fifteen – ranging from flyers to pre-printed sections for large shopping malls.”

That is why Axel Springer decided on additional inserting capacity in the form of two ProLiners, each with twelve stations. They are each coupled with a CoLiner pre-gathering unit with six stations and with three CombiStacks per line. The CombiStack is an innovative stack former without layers and with integrated addressing and tying. “That makes us ideally equipped to deal with fluctuations in insert volumes,” says Pengel. “We have integrated processes from the printing presses through the buffers, inserting lines, stackers and ramps to the trucks. Those processes are carried out nonstop, independently of the newspaper production.”

Space-saving solution
The plant manager of the Spandau printing house views the combination of an inserting machine and a pre-gathering unit as "the ideal solution”. “It saves space and can be easily expanded,” he says. The ProLiner and CoLiner are needed for 90 percent of production. However, even during the remaining inserting processes, the CoLiner is usually kept switched on “for learning purposes, to get employees used to the optimal interplay between the two machines”, as Pengel explains.

According to Pengel, experiences in the first months of operation have been extremely positive: “The net output in the inserting process is between 25,000 and 28,000 copies, which meets the target. Per line and shift, one machine operator can operate the whole system. The CombiStack is optimal for the Nordic tabloid format. And the extension of the Mailroom Production Control System optimizes feeder allocation, which provides us with an optimal time sequence in feeder allocation with brochures.”