Fairfax runs hot and cold in WA

Mandurah plant operators watched on as an open roof installation upgraded the existing manroland UNISET press at Fairfax Media’s WA printing plant.

The major six-month upgrade has transformed the UNISET into a heatset/coldset press pagination for an investment that came in under ten million dollars, according to Bob Lockley, chief executive of print & distribution at Fairfax Media Limited.

Now in full production, the UNISET press was upgraded in two stages to give Fairfax the ability to mix heatset and coldset production. It involved extensive development of the ancillary equipment.

Stage one installed two new eight-couple towers, two additional reel splicers and a folder to increase the coldset plant’s capacity and flexibility. The additional folder allows Fairfax redundancy in printing two products simultaneously. An additional Ferag production line was also installed.

Pictured: UNISET towers being delivered to Fairfax Media printing plant in Mandurah, WA.


Stage two saw the plant roof removed for a day as another eight-couple printing tower with dedicated reel splicer and a MEGTEC dryer was installed. This delivered heatset capacity to enable the production of a wider range of products from the plant.

According to Lockley, this major investment enhances product opportunities and adds the possibility of addressing the catalogue market.

“Stage one upgraded the coldest capability to 96 pages, while stage two introduced the new heatset capacity all under the watchful eye of our project manager, Barrie Murphy. The upgrade has finished and we are now in the process of commissioning the plant.

“We will be able to provide a much wider variety of products both coldset and heatset with a great deal of flexibility,” said Lockley.

Steve Dunwell, managing director of manroland Australasia, says it was quite a complex installation. “A lot more flexibility has been added to the products they can produce. They can now do 16-page heatset and 96-page coldest in tabloid equivalence, so it’s a significant development for the Western Australian web printing market.”