In Gelnhausen, about 50 km east of the Frankfurt am Main metropolis, Naumann has been operating a Ferag inserting system for advertising supplements since 2008. The company does an astonishing job using a MultiSertDrum and RollStream with 22 JetFeeders: this single line processed around half a billion inserts in 2017. Volume has grown year after year, indicating German advertising customers’ extremely high confidence in “push medium” supplements as well as daily and weekly newspapers as means of getting those in the hands of the public.

New press
2016 also saw a groundbreaking decision on printing: with all company stakeholders convinced about the site’s future viability, a new Commander CL press was ordered from Koenig & Bauer in Würzburg – two towers for printing 32 pages. For transfer of the products off the press, a pragmatic solution was initially planned using pre-owned compensating stackers. If necessary, the stacked newspaper products could be transported into the hall housing the existing RollStream for the inserting process. But things always seem to happen when least expected. With the original project under full steam and the first components of the new printing press already delivered, in early 2017 Naumann CEO Jochen Grossmann suddenly found himself facing a completely new situation: the closure of a production site in Giessen, 90 km away, meant that Druck- und Pressehaus Naumann could acquire a whole bunch of new printing jobs. On top of five daily newspaper editions and twelve weeklies, a further 60 to 80 million inserts would now have to be handled. There was no chance of processing such a volume on the existing Ferag inserting line. For Druck- und Pressehaus Naumann and Technical Manager Mirco Täuber, this meant thinking out a completely new postpress processing concept – including an additional inserting line.

Second inserting line
First, Ferag had to prevail against competitors in the bidding process. Success here was due not least to optimal incorporation into existing structures of the technology being offered – including integration of the equipment already acquired for offline transfer of products off the press. Insertion at Naumann is now done in the hall adjacent to the press, using a MultiSertDrum MSD-2C linked to two RollStreams – one with two JetFeeders fitted, the other equippable with twelve JetFeeders. Additional hoppers can be retrofitted in upcoming expansion phases. Why MSD and not, for example, a combination of EasySert and FlyStream? Mirco Täuber: “Had these Ferag systems existed in 2008, they would have been ideal for our supplement inserting business. With the new line, the ability to open the main product twice was particularly important to us.” This relates to the necessity of working with preprints plus having capability to do more than just co-insert supplements along with those preprints.

A switch makes the entire system flexible
The Giessen daily newspaper titles tend to make heavy use of preprints. On the other hand, this customer job also necessitated online postpress processing at night and hence a technology able to keep up with the printing speed of 40,000 copies per hour. Jochen Grossmann: “Every minute counts between 10.30 p.m. and 2.30 a.m. As a service provider, we are measured by our speed.” So it is not only increased personnel requirements that make offline production an impossibility. Due to these differing requirements, though – the narrow time window at night but also the necessity of using the older inserting system’s numerous hoppers for many other jobs – the overall system at Naumann is designed so that it can be changed over at any time. A switch within the universal conveyor line makes this possible. When newspapers are stacked directly from the press using only the compensating stackers, the inserting line can be used separately for other jobs. This is because it too has been equipped with two additional latest-generation MultiStack compensating stackers, for outputs of up to 90,000 copies per hour and 30 to as many as 40 bundles per minute.

Extremely tight project time window
The investment project was awarded to Ferag in late summer 2017. That meant there would be a maximum of four months to see it through: starting on 1 January 2018, all in-house as well as outside customers’ products would have to be runnable both on the existing systems and the new machines. Mirco Täuber: “Within six weeks, we completely renovated the former printing hall, which now had to accommodate the inserting line, and gave it a new foundation.” The first Ferag components arrived on 9 October. And while the Ferag technicians got to work on the installation, the rest of the building renovation was in progress virtually next door. The system consisting of an MSD inserting drum, dual RollStream and fourteen JetFeeders already went into operation on 18 December. Jochen Grossmann: “With our two Ferag inserting lines, we are now very well positioned – on the one hand here with the sprinter adjoining the printing press for rapid night shift production, and across the yard with the large system for middle-distance and marathon runners.” Both lines can be operated via the Ferag control system and Optimizer software, and optimally managed with regard to capacity utilization. Mirco Täuber: “That is why we decided to use the old standard user interface when operating the new system.”

Equipped for the future
“Where the newspaper scene in the state of Hesse is concerned, we are certainly not yet at the end of the consolidation process,” predicts CEO Jochen Grossmann. Even direct mail service companies now often use advertorial products as carriers for commercial content. This holds out the promise of completely new printing jobs. Against such a background, both the new printing press and postpress processing were designed to cope with further complex and qualitatively demanding jobs.

(http://www.ferag.com)