1st Ferag SNT-50 for newspaper giant

News Ltd installs Australia’s first two Ferag SNT-50 three-way trimming drums into its Queensland Newspapers and Perth Print operations.

According to deputy national production director, Wayne Bailey, the drums capable of trimming 50,000 copies per hour were chosen to complement existing Ferag publishing equipment. “It gives us the flexibility to trim online.

“They replaced existing offline trimming in Perth but not in Brisbane, as that site didn’t have that capability. Various other sites use Ferag trimmers and based on the performance of previous installations we chose the SNT-50 to complement existing operations,” he says.

Brisbane’s Murarrie site was the first to commission the trimmer late February, with it up and running from March. The site’s weekly supplement (u-magazine and property) circulations are approaching the million mark, as the paginations of processed products lie between 44 and 72 pages tabloid.

The Perth installation followed soon after in May with June operation. Immediately after the SNT-50 was commissioned, weekly print volumes were well above a million. Perth Print operations now trim the magazine supplements, home, STE and escape.

Thomas Klumpp, managing director of Ferag Australia, says the benefit of three-way trimming drum is the trim quality and pagination. “Before we had two models, a smaller 30,000 and large 40,000-trimming drum.

“The SNT-50 almost combines the footprint of the smaller model with a greater speed of the larger one,” he says. Noting that now the model has made its way to Australia, Ferag can use the installation as a reference to promote its capability to new customers.