According to the company, the upgrade from hot-glue sealing to heat-sealing will boost the performance of the flagship gravure site's four three-year-old CMC Polystream lines, which last year handled 2bn inserts, by as much as 30%.

"We polybag more than 3.5m products every week, within about four days, so what we need is high-speed, consistent running. A 30% uplift has given us a major boost," said Jeff White, account director in charge of major newspapers.

Last month's upgrade centred on the addition of a CMC2800 unit to each of the four Polystream lines.

"We found that by switching to a heat-sealing system while the running speed was slightly lower, we could run the lines continually for longer and have more uptime - and that 30% productivity boost and the waste reduction more than justified the investment," said White.

The four lines, along with a Buhrs polywrapper that wasmoved from Polestar Greaves earlier in the year following the site's closure last summer, currently polybag about 2m products for Associated Newspapers, publisher of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, and some 1.5m pieces for the Telegraph Media Group every week.

The polybagging upgrade in Sheffield coincides with a major investment in an Empirica Chess warehouse management system that has recently gone live.

According to the Polestar, the administration barcoding system gives the company more accurate control over warehousing and distribution of inserts and onserts.

"The aim is to give advertisers traceability and full confidence that their inserted products are reaching the targeted consumers and destinations," said Polestar Sheffield's managing director Andy Reynoldson.