The first Polaris, installed at the end of last month, is fully operational and by mid-March will be joined by two more. This installation will be followed by another Polaris at sister Northcliffe plant Leicester Mercury Group, with the option to take one more.

The installations at Derby and Leicester will take Northcliffes total to 19 Polaris systems to date, although it is believed that the order is for over 30 systems nationally.

Triangles three Polaris devices will run Agfas N91 plate into two Nela VCP 2002 bending systems and will be linked to other Northcliffe sites via the companys switched multimegabit data service (SMDS).

Triangle Print regional systems imaging manager Nick Preston (pictured) said the Polaris 100 with Monotype PrintExpress front-end was easily producing 80 plates an hour at 1,200dpi. He added that the system would produce over 100 plates per hour if resolution was dropped slightly to 1,016dpi.

"The Polaris is very basic to operate. Once the equipment is set up we just check the exposure and alter the laser power if necessary. Last week we did 4,900 plates," said Preston.

The 140-employee Triangle Print, which is a subsidiary of Derby Daily Telegraph, also prints contract titles for News International, Nottingham Post Group, Courier Newspapers and Smurfit Media UK.

The firm uses a Goss HT70 with two four-back-four colour towers along with a Goss Metroliner, which will be replaced by a Goss Colorliner.

Story by John Davies