The new printing press is expected to provide better quality imaging and more color opportunities in multi-page projects.
Courtesy photo
LUMBERTON — A new printing press at The Robesonian’s print facility in Lumberton will provide a number of benefits to the company’s print customers — including The Sentinel-Progress newspaper in Easley.
Beyond The Robesonian, the 1970s-era press serves a number of commercial clients throughout the region.
“For those that are not aware, The Robesonian is the production hub for Champion Media, LLC papers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, Ohio and North Dakota, and we print all of North Carolina and South Carolina company owned papers including The Sampson Independent, The Bladen Journal, The Robesonian, The Laurinburg Exchange, Richmond County Daily Journal, Anson Record, The Herald Advocate, The Newberry Observer and The Sentinel-Progress,” said Denise Ward, regional publisher.
The new printing press is expected to provide better quality imaging and more color opportunities in multi-page projects.
“It is an exciting time as we await newer press equipment that will allow us to increase quality, page count and color for our current advertisers and readers alike,” Ward said.
Modern printing presses use a series of individual units — each about the size of a large SUV — tied together to lay color onto the newsprint passing through each unit.
No less than four units are dedicated to each of the colors — cyan, magenta, yellow and black (CMYK) — required to produce a full-color image in a newspaper.
As large rolls of newsprint, each weighing about a ton, snakes through the press, it must pass through each of the color units required to produce a full-color image.
The current press allows for the production of six pages of color in each newspaper section of the newspaper. The new printing press will allow for twice that, according to Mike Skipper, production manager at the Lumberton facility.
“This will provide us with more color options and better quality,” Skipper said. He also said another feature of the new press includes the addition of a console, a control station allowing for fine tuning of press adjustments such as ink flow and alignment as pages move through each unit.
The current configuration requires such adjustments to be performed by hand on each print unit.
Skipper said the new press also brings “about two months of hard work as the new units are installed and brought up to speed.”
While the press is down, The Robesonian and other press clients will be printed at facilities nearby.
“This new press will enable us to provide better image quality and increase the number of color pages to better serve our readers,” said Kasie Strickland, general manager of The Sentinel-Progress. “In a time where more and more newspapers are scaling back production, we’re happy to be a part of a company that’s expanding and continuing to invest in local journalism.”