Even as newspapers are reducing their press’ web widths, they’re also modifying the postpress equipment necessary to accommodate their narrower editions.

Muller Martini Mailroom Systems Inc., Goss International Corp., K&M Newspaper Services Inc., Quipp Systems Inc. and other vendors are retrofitting thousands of pockets and other components of inserting machines now in operation nationwide.

Sizable business

“Anybody who is going to 46 inches or 44 inches is going to have to modify their legacy machines,” said Doug Gibson, Goss’ vice president of sales. While the vendor’s flagship Magnapak inserters can handle narrower widths automatically, older machines such as the 1472, 2299 and NP630/642 inserters Goss inherited when it purchased Heidelberg’s postpress operations have to be retrofit.

“It’s become a sizable business, and we have to be able to provide these types of services,” he said.

At K&M, the vendor said it modified inserters and other equipment at 48 sites in the past seven months, including the Lansing (Mich.) State Journal, which is moving to 44 inches.

The Journal is one of nine papers parent Gannett is moving to 11-inch-wide pages in 2008. Others include the Des Moines (Iowa) Register; the (Nashville) Tennessean; the Indianapolis Star and the Courier Journal in Louisville, Ky.

Goss is supplying Gannett with narrower pockets and the publisher also tapped Seidel Enterprises to retrofit SLS-1000 inserters. Randy Seidel, chief executive officer, said crews modified 16 machines in a project scheduled to end last month.

Quipp, meantime, is providing specially designed kits that enable newspapers to modify their existing stackers, inserters and other postproduction systems to handle smaller-format papers.

Another Gannett paper, The (Phoenix) Arizona Republic, just ordered spacers kits for its Quipp stackers and it also ordered 112 horizontal module kits for its Quipp conveyor lines to accommodate its 44-inch width.