Perhaps no printing company knows better than RR Donnelley that there is money to be made reproducing free-standing inserts. In the mid-1970s, when North America's largest printer was still family-run, the story goes that a hard-driving young salesman was pulling down more in commissions than the CEO's salary at the time. Montgomery Ward was one of his more lucrative accounts. The cash-rich rep, John Walter, would ascend to chairman.

Times change, but profit is still profit. Despite pressure from declining page counts and lower circulations for metropolitan daily newspapers, insert printers pocketed above-average profits in 2007, according to data gleaned from a PIA/GATF study.

Last month, Donnelley grew its already large share of this market by making a $122-million insert investment, acquiring privately held Pro Line Printing, Inc. The newspaper insert/circular printer has grown to a four-plant operation with 18 press lines from a single, North Carolina press line in 1999.

With roots dating back more than 30 years, Pro Line produces advertising inserts for retailers such as Gottschalks, Home Depot and Wal-Mart Stores; the latter awarded it offset tabloid “Printer of the Year” status in 2003 and 2004. (Donnelley's Charlestown, IN, facility, acquired in 2005 from AdPlex-Rhodes, has won the customer award for the past three consecutive years.)

During Donnelley's fourth-quarter earnings conference call in late February, CEO Tom Quinlan told financial analysts why Pro Line is such a good fit: “We continue to look for targeted opportunities to ... broaden our geographic reach, to exercise our considerable front-end print media and back-end logistics capabilities ... and to add needed capacity without increasing capital expenditures,” Quinlan said, calling Pro Line “a good cultural fit with a talented workforce” and not “a troubled operation that would require a significant turnaround.

“The work that we've done,” he continued, “to expand, refurbish and integrate our platform allows [us] to achieve significant internal efficiencies. We ... manage utilization rates across our facilities, leverage our own buying power for equipment and raw materials and standardize procedures to facilitate functions.”

With a corporate office now in Texas, near Dallas, Pro Line operates production plants in nearby Arlington, TX; Avon, CT (Hartford); Pineville, NC (Charlotte); and Reno, NV—some 500 employees and floor space totaling approximately 500,000 sq.ft. The four facilities revolve around a common press platform: finger-printed Goss C700I large-format, heatset webs that feature 66´´ web widths and 21´´ cut-off lengths.

The plants also use common versions of the most advanced Creo Prinergy software. (Pro Line says it was the first offset insert printer to be 100% computer to plate). And the firm uses common ink, chemistry, plates and prepress technology to deliver consistent products in its multi-plant environment.

Earlier this year, a month before Donnelley announced its intention to buy Pro Line, the printer set a production speed record on the C700I insert presses: In one 12-hour shift, the company produced more than two million impressions on two presses configured with DigiRail inking technology. The precise ink-metering system replaces traditional, open-fountain ink delivery, reducing start-up waste while delivering consistently high print quality, says Goss. DigiRail “has helped us to be even more efficient [and] provide better quality to our customers…,” said Steven Haire, GM of the 150,000-sq.ft. Reno Division, which Pro Line started up in late 2004 and has grown to nearly 100 employees.

Pro Line was the first printer to equip a Goss insert press with DigiRail inking. (It also was among the first to install a Sunday 3000i insert press with gapless blankets.) Haire attributed low makeready waste levels largely to the accuracy of the presets. “There's virtually zero fluctuation in the ink densities once they're set,” he noted, adding that “because there are no ink fountains, we have completely eliminated the possibility of contaminated ink.”

DigiRail replaces analog, open-fountain ink delivery with digital ink pack devices housing low-torque, inline gear pumps that feed ink pulses to the ink train through individual valves that are digitally controlled. More than 50,000 of the individual ink packs are installed on Goss newspaper and insert presses. This past fall, the PIA/GATF InterTech Award-winning technology became available for commercial webs. The system can be retrofit on some existing presses and is an option for new M-600 and gapless Sunday models.

ONLINE: gossinternational.com, graphics.kodak.com