First Digital Newspaper Production Worldwide – Featuring Muller Martini Systems in the Mailroom
Mengis Druck AG, based in Visp in the Swiss canton of Valais, is setting a milestone in the graphic arts industry by installing the world's first digital newspaper printing press. The Walliser Bote, Mengis' flagship publication, will be printed digitally from July and finished in the mailroom using an AlphaLiner from Muller Martini.
"Digital printing and its potential applications" was the title of the thesis that Nicolas Mengis wrote at the Technical College of the Graphic Arts Industry in Basel in 1997 and which was later also published as a book. Eighteen years later he is in charge of the world's first digital printing press as Chairman of Mengis Group's Board of Directors.
In July the Walliser Bote, which has a print run of six times 22,000 copies per week, will become the first daily newspaper worldwide to be printed using an HP T400 color inkjet web press. The new digital printing system, which will replace an older web offset printing press in the summer, will also print commercial products.
The AlphaLiner is the ideal newspaper inserting system given that space is scarce in the mailroom.
AlphaLiner – Cost-Effective and Compact
The "flagship project", as Alois Hochstrasser, Director of Muller Martini Marketing, described the pilot system at a small celebration of the signing of the supply contracts at Mengis, comprises a folding system from manroland and a mailroom from Muller Martini in addition to the HP T400. The core of Muller Martini's mailroom is the AlphaLiner inserting system featuring an automatically fed main section feeder and two insert feeders, as well as an inkjet addressing unit, a PrintStack compensating stacker, a TABA-F top sheet applicator, a cross strapping unit and the Connex.Mailroom.
Martin Seematter, Managing Director of Mengis Druck AG, explains that there were three main benefits of the Muller Martini solution: "First, the price-performance ratio of the AlphaLiner is optimal. Second, it's very compact, which benefits us since space is scarce. And third, unlike with our previous solution, we can control the PrintStack compensating stacker. That's of great benefit to us in terms of route-specific distribution and zoning of inserts."
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