In many respects the human story behind Dutch contract printer FD Hoekstra Boom is at least as remarkable as the technology it employs. And the technology itself is pretty remarkable: Europe’s first installation of Goss’s Flexible Printing System (FPS) press is the only one configured to take advantage of a modular facility to change the cut-off of the web press.

And a hoped-for newspaper contract next year may result in daily changes between tabloid and the increasingly-popular Berliner format ... and back again.

First, the human story: That the FPS stands at all in a new factory in the centrally-located town of Emeloord is a tribute to the vision of owner Bauke Jaap Hoekstra. But as is probably now well-known, Hoekstra (52) suffered a heart attack and died only weeks after the order was announced at Ifra 2006.

During this year’s IfraExpo, his children were among those who welcomed journalists and other Goss guests to the site. Femke, Duco and Nynke bravely continued with their father’s plan – even to the detail of the Scandinavian-style industrial building at the Emeloord site – and the new press was commissioned in April.

With modest understatement, Femke Hoekstra told me, “It was hard to carry on.”

But carry on they have: A new management team now includes commercial director Jan Schilperoord, and Hans Emmink and who has returned as technical director to the company for which he had worked for 18 years, after a role with Flint Ink.

And after its textbook commissioning, the twin-tower Goss FPS is kept busy with a substantial share of the 120 titles the company prints every week. The total of about 3.5 million copies includes the daily 18,000 print order of the regional ‘Friesch Dagblad’ for the Netherlands’ smallest independent publisher.

Short runs are the order of the day for Hoekstra, which was split from its publishing activities in 1999, and the smallest regular job is 425 copies. And while the FPS may appear a big press for such short-run production, its high-level automation and features such as DigiRail inking help control waste and contribute to production efficiency.

The FPS printed 400,000 copies in its first week of production, increasing to more than a million regularly. Facilities include a skip-slitter and inline stitcher, plus links to a Müller Martini mailroom.

It’s an unusual, but forward-looking configuration: For a press designed to exploit single-level operation, the ‘quiet room’ is located in an eyrie above the folder and at ribbon-deck level. Plates are currently delivered at ground level, but a one-metre gap has been left between the top of the towers and the superstructure to provide space for automated plate delivery. Currently, there is semiautomatic loading and automating deplating, plus ‘must-haves’ such as automatic blanket washing and QI colour rego.

The core concept of the press is that launched by Goss at DRUPA in 2004, and the last major innovation to come out of the grand halls of the company’s Greenbank Street, Preston, factory in the UK.

In fact the Emeloord line was built in the USA. It uses a raft of preexisting technologies, combined to deliver ultimate flexibility, economy and productivity: A ‘future-proof’ press.

The FPS’s three-section printing towers slide apart for ease of access and maintenance and the huge 2:5:5 jaw folder also slides apart. In a variable cut-off application – which Emmink says would take about a year to implement, but cost only 30 per cent of a new press – the central modules would each interchange with another for the envisaged Berliner (or other) format.

Paradoxically, only one web width (1680 mm) is used, although the right-angle design – in which webs and slit and turned atop each tower – would make this relatively easy.

The 87,000 cph FPS press replaces lines at Meppel and Leeuwarden including a double-width Goss Visa, and centralises production at the site where a three-and-a-half tower Goss Universal 70, had been installed eight years ago to drive the new focus on contract printing. Production demands had also increased in 2002, when Royal Boom Publishers became shareholders.

The 126-year-old company’s history is punctuated with innovation ... in the use of CTP, Dutch company QI’s colour register systems, and their world-first ISO-12647-3 certification. They’re also proud to relate that the new press took only a roll of paper in trials ... and that it was the first to score 100 per cent at its first Ifra International Color Quality Club test.

Now, more ‘firsts’ are being added to the scoresheet through an innovation planned by Bauke Jaap Hoekstra and implemented in a manner of which he would be justly proud.

Standout density performance ... with less ink

Unprecedented print quality results “from day-one” are claimed for the Hoekstra Boom installation.

Ifra performance standards were exceeded by a factor of between two and five during formal acceptance testing, and technical director Hans Emmink says density uniformity was surpassed by a factor of three, while exceeding the starvation standard, also by a factor of three.

“What’s more, we are not seeing any visible ghosting – it is, quite literally, immeasurable, and all of this is being achieved with a significant reduction in ink consumption compared to what we had been using before on our other presses,” he says.

Goss International says Emmink’s observations are confirmed by independent testing done in May by Flint Ink. Two standard forms were used to assess dot characteristics, grey balance, ink water balance, trapping, ink densities, set-off, marking and other characteristics. The results exceeded all Ifra Color Quality Club and ISO total print quality criteria. For the first time ever, a 100-per cent colour quality score was achieved according to the Flint Group’s methodology.

“Many presses never achieve this print quality level, even after years of continuous improvement efforts,” says Emmink.