Jehovah Witnesses await press replacement bonus

As part of the upgrade, the Jehovah's Witnesses organisation is buying seven Lithoman III 64pp short grain web presses for various locations around the world. The first is to be installed in its Mill Hill, north London, centre in July.

It will begin printing12 million copies a month of The Watchtower and Awake from November in 26 language versions. This will be followed by installations in Brazil, Japan, Mexico and South Africa and two for the New York operation. The Japanese machine will be the first MAN Roland web press in that country.

In Australia the Jehovah Witnesses operate a major printing operation in the outer Sydney suburb of Ingleburn. According to the coordinator, Viv Moritz, the group prints 300,000, 32-page, four-colour publications every week, alternating between the two titles. Bibles and other books used by the group are all imported. As the publishing centre for the region, Ingleburn produces 20 different language versions and exports the magazines to New Zealand, New Guinea, Tahiti and the Pacific Islands.

“We operate a 15-year old Japanese TKS rotary press here, which is a good solid machine. Our needs are not large enough for the MAN Rolands that are being installed elsewhere. But perhaps we will pick up one of the later model machines that are being replaced,” he said.

The organization is still producing plates from film, but Moritz confirmed it is keeping a close watch on CTP technology.

The local operation recently joined with the international organization to source its paper worldwide, with the majority of it now coming from Italy. “When we started printing here we tried to use Australian paper from Albury, but they were not able to keep up the supply, which is a pity,” said Moritz.

Most of the editorial material in the magazines, including the different language versions, is downloaded digitally from New York. Jehovah Witnesses was one of the first organizations to develop its own multi-language publishing system, MAPS. It produces publications in Arabic and Chinese characters.

The new Man Roland Lithoman III press is generally a 32pp short grain machine, but with the 984.25mm cut off of The Watchtower, the 1,480mm web width machine can accommodate the 64pp titles. The machines are rated at 45,000 cph.