The installation includes two Creo TrendsetterNews 200 platesetters, ProImage NewsWay workflow and Kodak Polychrome Graphics (KPG) ThermalNews plates and processors.

More than 400 plates per hour can be produced on the new equipment. "I have always been aware of the quality benefits afforded by the thermal process but until now speed was always an issue," said Newsquest Oxford printing services manager Geoff Harvey. "Our printing quality will be improved because thermally imaged plates deliver consistent high quality halftone dots. Production times will be reduced because thermal plates will give us quicker makeready times."

The site had been running film and hand planning before the installation of the Creo lines. The move to CTP is part of a larger investment that included a MAN Roland Geoman press.

It is only the second newspaper printer in the UK to install thermal CTP, following on from Archant, which installed a KPG system in February 2001 and now runs three KPG Newsetters.

KPG UK managing director Terry Baber said that the firm had a couple of other newspaper sites "in the pipeline". "The nice thing is they're starting to move, all of a sudden people are starting to see the benefit," he said. "There are 160 thermal newspaper sites in Europe, but the UK newspaper market was ahead of Europe adopting CTP."

He expected more newspapers to switch to thermal when they installed second-generation CTP. "That will be when its time comes," he added. Newsquest Oxford prints the Oxford Mail, Oxford Times, Swindon Evening Advertiser and Wiltshire Gazette & Herald.