First print run at new Progress Press plant

The first print run at the new Mriehel premises of Progress Press took place this morning with the printing of the 32 early pages of the next edition of The Sunday Times.

This run, normally carried out on Thursday nights at the Valletta press, was completely held at Mriehel. This included the generation of the plates, printing and stacking, chief operations officer Noel Galea said.

He said that the printed copies will now be taken to Valletta for insertion into the rest of the paper.

The printing was carried out by the Global Web Systems G-145 Printline with the Ferag Mailroom System hooked on to it.

The Global Web Systems G-145 Printline is made up of eight printing towers, and is capable of pumping out 64 newspaper-sized pages simultaneously, at a rate of 40,000 an hour.

It is capable of handling jobs that have so far only been available abroad.

The Farag Mailroom System is a conveyer system that picks up the papers from the output of the printing machine and transports them onto a stacker for automatic binding and stacking.

The new machine provides for automatic registration of colours and has improved colour balance controls that should lead to the achievement of good quality copies in shorter time, cutting down on set-up time and waste.

The run will now be evaluated with others to be carried out in the coming days to define a roadmap for the transfer of the whole newspaper printing process from Valletta to Mriehel.

The €26 million Mriehel plant will allow Progress Press to streamline its operations, which cater for local and international markets.