The Lincolnshire firm, which prints around 80 titles each week, has bought a building next door to its existing site to accommodate the six-tower, single-width press.

Jim Lee, Mortons Print production director, said that the investment had been made to satisfy customers' needs for more colour.

"We need to meet the demands of the marketplace customers want more full-colour and more pages. The days when newspaper printers could print what they wanted are long gone," he said.
The new press, which will have a single folder, will be able to produce 96pp tabloid full-colour in collect mode, or 48pp in straight mode at up to 75,000cph, when it comes on-stream in March next year.

Mortons' existing eight-tower, two-folder Goss Universal press is capable of producing a 64pp tabloid paper with 32pp colour. "The problem is that for bigger publications we sometimes have to do two runs to get the colour," said Lee.

The press will feature power  plate loading, digital inking, automatic webbing and on-press colour registration. Barry Leatherland, Mortons Print managing director, said that automation was "vital" to the choice of new kit.

Reelstands will be built at right-angles to the press and on the same level, so that it will fit inside the 9m-high building.

Lee added that Mortons was considering a further investment to add a second folder and three more towers to the Uniset line, although he said that this decision would be made "in due course".

The Ferag mailroom set-up includes kit for reel inserting, trimming, palletising, underwrapping, filmwrapping and cross strapping, and a gripper line. Mortons is currently evaluating its staffing needs for the new plant.

Story by Josh Brooks