Summary

This question was discussed on 17/18 October 1985 by a group of experts who gathered to participate in an IFRA Forum. Following in the wake of events discussing "videotex marketing", "news on demand agency services" and "four-colour advertising", this was the fourth IFRA Forum in which four users and three manufacturers of rotary presses - one manufacturer had to cancel his participation at short notice - sat down together at the octagonal table in the IFRA Institute in Darmstadt to work out a joint approach for the future. The discussion was dominated by the search for ways and means of achieving simplifications in order to reduce costs as well as to avoid reversing gears and complicated web leads. The desire to retain flexibility, the foreseeable trend towards more colour, also on the eye-catching right-hand pages, as well as the wish to obtain a better press utilisation by the possibility of using it to also produce commercial-type products, led to all parties agreeing on the concept of an eight-unit tower with four stacked blanket-to-blanket sets of printing couples, at least in cases where the aim is to replace six-unit towers in larger publishing houses. In such a case, short inking units would bring the impression points so close together that in-register printing would be ensured. Although at first these developments may not seem to hold much interest for the majority of regional newspapers, it should not be forgotten that in the past developments concerning larger presses have always affected the development of rotary presses for smaller publishing houses.