The regional newspaper printer has installed two plate production lines, each with a Creo TrendsetterNews 150 platesetter imaging onto KPG ThermalNews plates and a KPG Mercury News plate processor.

The investment at the plant, which produces 1.5m newspapers each week, was completed with Nela punching and registration equipment.

The plant is also set to join the trend for full-colour newspaper printing with an upgrade to its 128pp KBA Comet press, which currently produces 96pp of colour in collect mode, by adding an additional unit and upgrading another tower.

Operations manager Graham Stephenson said: "We felt there was a superior dot with thermal, that is easily obtained on equipment that is easy to maintain, and it's environmentally friendly."

He said that the pre-press revamp would improve on the previous labour-intensive manual set-up. "We knew it wouldn't be difficult to justify the expenditure because the returns would be very quick," he added.

"It's made a massive difference to our operations in terms of business schedules in that we're able to hit them consistently, whereas before there were often log-jams in platemaking."

Stephenson added that just one plate line could cope with the 3,000 plates per week demand at the plant, but that a second had been installed "for resilience".

Agfa Polaris platesetters were also considered during an 18-month planning period for the pre-press spend.

Cumbrian Newsprint produces a number of regional and national titles including The Sun, Cumberland News, Whitehaven News, the Times & Star and the News & Star. It operates a sister site in Barrow-in-Furness.

Story by Josh Brooks