Paarl Media invests in new Cerutti Rotogravure Publication Aurora Press

Paarl Media is pleased to announce their purchase of a new Cerutti Rotogravure Publication Aurora Press in September 2011. This press will be installed in their Paarl Media Cape plant in Montague Gardens, with planned start up scheduled for September 2012. Stephen van der Walt, CEO of Paarl Media, explains the motivation behind the decision. “In servicing our retail clients, better run and waste efficiencies with uncompromised colour quality consistency on low grammage and uncoated papers is critical to delivering a value driven product. The “Aurora concept” represents a new generation of gravure presses with the latest technology, aimed at economical efficiency, flexibility and improvement of competitiveness. This will be the second of its kind installed in the world with the first being at Abril in Brazil.”

Christoff Botha, Managing Director of Paarl Media Cape, highlights what this investment will mean for his plant. “Gravure is the ideal printing method for long run publications on lower grammages, and we have seen a growing demand for these types of products in the retail market. The new press offers more flexibility and gives more pages than current in market on smaller sizes. It will be a replacement for our existing older 48-page Cerutti machine with the newer, much improved technology delivering less make ready time, less make ready copy waste and greater energy efficiency in electrical and steam usage.”

This combined with Paarl Media Cape’s soon to be implemented steam generation project, which is planned to result in them being carbon negative on steam generation, will deliver printing that is more efficient in terms of production, as well as more environmentally sustainable. “Energy efficiency is becoming increasingly important from both a green perspective as well as in response to rising Eskom costs for power. Our investment here with allow our clients to meet both objectives,” notes Christoff.

The new technology of the press will also improve colour quality and consistency with advanced register control and better controls on ink. “Our focus is servicing the commercial market, especially the retailers. With the newest gravure printing capability available in South Africa, we can offer our clients bigger redundancy and the best quality in the gravure market.” concludes Botha. “With our complementing gravure and heatset web offset capabilities under one roof, we offer the ultimate in flexibility in terms of meeting clients’ requirements.