Printing Plant Designed Green
The 15-month building project considered sustainability at the start.
Lisa Cross, Senior Editor -- Graphic Arts Online, February 2, 2010
Exterior view of Transcontinental’s mega NADEV Printing Facility, Fremont, CA.Transcontinental Printing's mega, $80 million, 335,650-sq.ft. printing plant built in Fremont, CA, to print the San Francisco Chronicle earned LEED Silver designation from the U.S. Green Building Council. LEED, which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is a green building rating system. The Montreal-based printer invested more than $200 million to build and equip the 4-story building.
Known as the NADEV Printing Facility, some of its green features include designated parking stalls for carpool and low-emission or fuel-efficient vehicles, 98,000 sq.ft. earth-friendly landscaping; 43,000 gallon retention pond; high-efficiency drip irrigation, and bathroom fixtures that minimize water use.
Other sustainable features included using recycled materials for the exterior walls, such as precast concrete and composite metal skin panels, the installation of an Energy Star-rated siphonic roof drain system and a Dolphin non-chemical water treatment system.
It was built by McCarthy Building Cos., and Kwan Henmi Architecture/Planning, Inc. of San Francisco provided the design The project was designed with the goal of achieving LEED Silver Certification, which demanded a heightened focus on sustainability in design and construction from all project partners
The sprawling plant
A peak inside Transcontinental’s NADEV Printing Facility that includes a 97,275-sq.ft. press hall and a 238,375-sq.ft. mail room.houses three manroland Colorman XXL presses, the first 6 x 2 blanket-to-blanket newspaper presses in North America. Each shaftless press is configured with three eight-couple towers fed by four Roland CD-15 XXL reelstands and operated from two Pecom control consoles, and be capable of producing 36 broadsheet pages in full process color, or 48 broadsheet pages with 24 in full color.
Materials handling systems in the plant include Ferag and Goss equipment including three UTR conveyors, five DiscPool buffering systems, five MultiSertDrum inserting drums with RollStream, 40 JetFeeder, two 30:2 Magnapack inserting systems, 10 MultiStack stackers and 20 SmartStrap strapping machines, among other items.
The Montreal printing giant has an exclusive 15-year, $1 billion contract with Hearst Corp to print its newspaper.The web printing plant began printing the San Francisco Chronicle in July 2009.
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