Top 50 Report On The Web...Press

Only the biggest and busiest in-plants can support web presses.

Most in-plants have found ways to incorporate the Web into their operations. But the other kind of web—the web press—remains a rare find in an in-house print shop. Only a few of the very largest in-plants have them. That's because it takes a lot of volume to keep a web press busy—and a lot of people to run one.

Several in-plants on the IPG Top 50 have that volume and staff. Chief among them is the Government Printing Office, in Washington, D.C., which operates 10 web presses—eight Hantschos and two Harris models. The main products being printed on these webs are the Federal Register and the Congressional Record, both of which require high volumes and very fast turnaround.

"A lot of our congressional publications, we're not given a whole lot of time to do them," remarks Barry McMahon, assistant superintendent of GPO's press division. Files for the Congressional Record, for example, often arrive late at night, and finished books must be ready—by law—the next morning.

"We keep web press persons on all three shifts," McMahon says. Often, operators are pulled from other equipment to help run the massive webs.

The state of California also faces those tight, legally mandated deadlines. All business conducted by the state legislature has to be published the next morning, says Carl Sterkel, printing plant superintendent at the California Office of State Publishing (OSP), in Sacramento.

The in-plant uses an eight-unit Heidelberg M-1000 MV to print voter pamphlets, income tax forms, motor vehicle books, newsletters and other web work. It installed the press just a couple of years ago—and no one is looking forward to moving it now that OSP is being forced to move its operation. The in-plant also runs some older Hantscho webs, and State Printer Joe Hills has talked about upgrading those with new web equipment after the move.

Web presses have a long history at OSP.

"We've had web presses here since, I think, 1967," says Sterkel. "That's about when I came to work here."

Sterkel says the large volumes OSP prints make web presses more cost effective than sheetfed presses.

"We're printing for the whole state of California," he explains. Also, he adds, agencies often make last-minute changes and the in-plant still has to get those jobs printed and into the mail.

Grocery Store Bargains

David DeWildt is no stranger to last-minute changes. With his in-plant's main business being grocery store ad inserts for Spartan Stores, he is used to price changes being made almost up until press time. But that's one reason Spartan chooses to print these inserts itself. Another reason? Cost, DeWildt says.

"Through our years of experience, we can do it a lot more cost effectively than they can on the outside," he says—especially considering the price changes and deadlines.

Spartan's in-plant, in Grand Rapids, Mich., has had web presses for 35 years, DeWildt says. It initially produced circulars on sheetfed presses, but the volume kept rising. Today the in-plant runs four 16-unit Goss Community webs. Together they produce 5.1 million circulars a week, along with some commercial work.

"We run 20 people on the web presses," DeWildt notes. "We're up against the clock constantly."

Though such giant webs are few and far between at in-plants, some Top 50 operations run smaller webs. Both the state of Alabama and Cigna use King Press webs in their in-plants.

"We use it for directories," explains Michael Giunta, who oversees Cigna Printing & Distribution, in Charleston, S.C. "We print the vast majority of our directories for the health care industry. We find it to be cost effective."

He says Cigna used to have the directories printed outside.

"We did some cost analysis and found out we could save some money" by printing them internally, he says.

When runs get really short, Giunta adds, the in-plant sends them to yet another web device: a roll-fed Océ digital printer.

Giunta, and other in-plant web printers, have seen some web business disappear thanks to (surprise) the Web. But they're not worried. When it comes to high-volume directories, grocery ads and government publications, they feel people will always want paper copies.

-by BOB NEUBAUER