St Clements Press
Nov. 18th, 2017 04:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qatsiThe Print Site Tour is an unusual work perk, and it is highly coveted. This week I was lucky enough to get a last-minute place. After an introductory session in the office, which explained the process of producing and adjusting the colour separations, and transferring the files to the presses worldwide, we headed off to deepest Stratford. St Clements Press (the sign on the building had no apostrophe; it seems to be a movable feast, as the LSE history has one) sounds to me like a codeword, as if one shouldn't know exactly what is printed there, but in fact it is the name of a separate company acquired by the FT years ago which has printed the FT and other papers for a long time. However, the Guardian's print operation, next door, was not so discreet about its mission.
After another induction, we toured the factory, seeing among others, the places where the paper rolls are loaded, the printing plates are produced (by what is essentially a giant laser printer producing lithographs on aluminium plates), and the paper folded and collated. It was a fascinating if noisy hour or so. Print media is in decline and it seems inevitable that one day it will disappear altogether, though there's no suggestion that will happen in the near future.
The paper rolls are about 2km long. This machine joins them together so there's no stoppage when the roll runs out.
Stop Press!
One of the plates was in the wrong way around. This doesn't matter much so long as it's discovered early, because the first few hunderd copies are binned anyway. It takes time for the machinery to warm up and for the print quality to become acceptable.
The presses running.
The magical folding machine. All pages have to arrive in alignment, so they can be combined here. Lots of adjustable rollers control the length of run for each roll.
Hot off the press.
Journalism in motion.
After another induction, we toured the factory, seeing among others, the places where the paper rolls are loaded, the printing plates are produced (by what is essentially a giant laser printer producing lithographs on aluminium plates), and the paper folded and collated. It was a fascinating if noisy hour or so. Print media is in decline and it seems inevitable that one day it will disappear altogether, though there's no suggestion that will happen in the near future.
The paper rolls are about 2km long. This machine joins them together so there's no stoppage when the roll runs out.
Stop Press!
One of the plates was in the wrong way around. This doesn't matter much so long as it's discovered early, because the first few hunderd copies are binned anyway. It takes time for the machinery to warm up and for the print quality to become acceptable.
The presses running.
The magical folding machine. All pages have to arrive in alignment, so they can be combined here. Lots of adjustable rollers control the length of run for each roll.
Hot off the press.
Journalism in motion.