The printing press used by Torch Publishing for its newspapers is a Global G100 web offset press with five towers - each of which can produce 8 full colour pages. This gives a total of 40 pages of colour in a single print run. There are also some smaller mono (black and white only) units which allows a total of 56 pages with 40 pages of full colour.
The aluminium printing plates are placed on the cylinders of the press in a pre-determined order to ensure the pages run correctly in the finished product (left).
The areas on the plate which have been exposed by the platesetter allow ink to adhere to them, whilst the non-exposed areas allow only water to adhere. Therefore, when the ink rollers pass across the plates, the ink will stick only to the image areas.
The amount of ink that hits the plates, the speed of the press and the ultimate alignment of the plates (registration) is all controlled from a console in a 'quiet room' (right) where the printers can watch everything happening.
As the press cylinders rotate, the inked image on the printing plate is transferred to a rubber blanket, and in turn this blanket transfers the image to the paper, which is running as a "web" through the press. This, incidentally, is why these presses are known as offset presses - the image is offset from the blankets and the paper never actually touches the printing plate.
As many webs as are required for the number of pages are running at the same time, each leading to a particular set of cylinders on a press unit, to pick up the image from the printing plates.
As the webs progress through the press units, they collect all the images in the required order, and go through the folder and guillotine to come out as a stream of newspapers ready for bundling and delivery.
Different newspaper companies have different distribution methods. Large metropolitan dailies have automated bundling and labelling areas, and papers are delivered by van to distribution points, or by air for country or interstate distribution. Some suburban newspapers have their own delivery departments, and others use contract companies to deliver their newspapers to individual households. Torch is responsible for the delivery of our papers through our internal distribution system.