Jumbo Rolls

How can a commercial printer automatically increase efficiency in paper consumption? In the early part of the decade, the answer was simply to install very large presses. The Cerutti line was quite popular with companies like Quad/Graphics, which wanted to print long-run, commercial jobs for retailers interested in Sunday newspaper inserts and target mailings. Suddenly, rotogravure presses were now printing huge 142´´ rolls at speeds approaching 3,000 fpm, capable of running millions of impressions without plate changes or roll changes for hours.

Paper mills adapted to this trend. They installed heavy-duty lifting and handling equipment off-machine, incredibly precise monitoring and actuating equipment on-machine, and a variety of upgrades to transportation gear.

Mills were challenged to make paper with very tight moisture and caliper profiles across the entire width of these super-wide reels. They had to rewind it using new 6´´ cores on single-drum winders, wrap it and convey it at terrific diameters and weight (60´´ and 12,000 lbs.), lift it flawlessly into a rail car, and then get the operators at the other end to do the same, including put it on press without damage.

A resurgence of interest in jumbo rolls and wide presses is now seen not only in rotogravure, but offset as well. Three-meter rolls (about 120´´) are once again viewed as a way for the commercial printing business to make an efficiency leap. But it is not that easy either at the mill or the pressroom.

Abitibi-Consolidated, one of the world's largest producers of newsprint and value-added grades for inserts, catalogs and commercial printing, invested nearly $100 million to expedite orders for jumbo rolls some years ago. Noticing its newsprint customers were getting more orders for commercial jobs of some size, they moved product development into higher value-added grades and supercalendered grades like AbiBrite and AbiCal for rotogravure presses. The reason, says the firm's Richard LeFebvre, was simply economics. “Printers wanted less waste, less rolls, less cores, less (butt rolls) and less makeready time to provide attractive pricing to end-users like Kohl's, Target, Kmart and Sears. If you say the standard roll diameter was 45´´ and that moved up to 50´´, then you have achieved a 20% reduction in waste. Now the market is looking for 60'' diameter rolls and 142´´ widths, driving at even more efficiency in paper use.”

Today, as the offset market gains interest in jumbo rolls, RR Donnelly is said to be actively looking at how to re-tool some locations to allow them to bid on insert jobs. However, this would be an offset application, which does not offer the ultimate efficiencies of rotogravure—at least when comparing plate life.

On the paper side, Myllokoski OY, better known in the U.S. as Madison Paper, is also seeing some interest in jumbo rolls for offset. Its supercalendered SCA grades, known as MY Plus, MY Gold, etc., papers are made around 106´´ wide, and have been chiefly used in rotogravure applications. But heatset web offset is being tested at these wide widths. Madison Paper's mill in Alsip, IL, was retrofit some years back to accommodate jumbo roll orders.

Stora Enso has the world's largest wrap line at its mill in Summa, Finland. In 2004, the mill started up a line that could make rolls five meters wide, 1.5 meters in diameter and weighing eight metric tons. The line can process 30 rolls per hour. Cerutti gravure presses like the R335, which have been installed in Europe and Asia, now gobble up 3.7 meter-wide rolls. The world's largest newsprint machine, installed in a Stora Enso mill in Belgium in 2003, has a similar line, supplying huge newsprint rolls to Axel Springer and others in Europe. Maybe the U.S. mills of SENA will see these installations in future.

UPM-Kymmene had a challenge when entering the jumbo roll market in U.S.: Where to land it. After an exhaustive study, the company decided it had to have very special equipment to off-load its ships from Finland carrying the jumbo rolls. Jaxport in Jacksonville, FL, was selected for its attention to managing such gargantuan cargoes.

At $4,000 to $6,000 a pop for a jumbo SC roll, handling becomes a big issue. Typically, these rolls are wrapped in kraft paper and set in 6´´ diameter cores. Keep in mind that a paper roll, depending on where it's ordered and when it'll be put on press, could be handled a dozen times over nine months to a year. It better have a tough wrap and an even tougher core.

Printers must first be able to receive the rolls from a retrofitted railcar. (Though some are received by truck, this would not be an efficient way of receiving jumbo rolls due to restrictions of transport weight and handling safety.) The rail car must have a door opening that allows lift trucks to clamp rolls and lift them through the opening. Short-term leasing of these special cars is not economical, so going to jumbo rolls means a long-term commitment between the user and the railroad.

The lift trucks must be rated to handle the extra weight and diameter of the jumbo rolls. Special pads and clamps must be fitted to the lift truck to ensure against liner tears and drops. Clamping force must also be reviewed to make sure the clamp force is not too high that it flattens the core, causing big problems like corrugation and warping at press. Cascade Corp., a leading producer of paper clamps, uses something called Adaptive Force Control, a sensing tool by the truck to automatically adjust clamping force for the weight and size of the roll. In Europe, Stora Enso works with lift truck operators and their label, called a Belly Bar Code, so that when lifted, the information form the label tells the clamp what force top use.

Finally, it is a good idea to have a really good Certificate of Analysis of the jumbo roll that includes the delta moisture and caliper/basis weight. Because the gravure cylinder is an enormous printing repeat range (840 mm over 1960 mm), the profile of the paper's moisture and basis weight must be pristine. Mills use very expensive scanning equipment to track and control profiles on-line. To have a portion of that information available for the operator to check tact and speed before loading a roll will be beneficial.

With seven Goss Sunday 3000 presses routinely printing catalogs at 49 feet per second, Arandell Corp. of Menomonee Falls, WI, was among the first to experiment with 60´´ roll diameters in late 2004, reports Tom O'Rourke, GAM project editor. Jim Treis, exec. VP of sales and marketing, has no reservations about the results and the potential. “We would run 100% of our work on the larger rolls today, if we could get the paper we need in all weights and web widths,” he explains.

Goss offers its Contiweb FD paster to handle the larger rolls. The press-maker's statistics point out that 60´´ rolls can yield up to 44% more paper than industry-standard 50´´ rolls. Increasing diameters to 60´´ extends the average time between splices from 40 minutes to 58 minutes and cuts the number of splices by 30%. Fewer splices are seen as reducing direct labor cost and reducing the opportunity for web breaks and paper waste.