New Zealand’s Guardian Print is moving further into heatset with the installation of a dedicated heatset press at a new print site in Rolleston.

The ISO9001-registered business – a spin-off from the Ashburton Guardian – has sourced a Goss M-600 from France though Dutch specialist GWS Printing Systems.

Director Steve Gallop says heatset capacity on the four-tower DGM single-width newspaper press is now taken up, and with Guardian now the South Island’s only independent commercial web printer, it was time to move.

“Business has taken off,” says Gallop, who joined from PMP Print in 2009 when the two heatset towers were added, and is joint owner with Ross Mains, and Ashburton Guardian proprietor Bruce Bell.

Needing extra space for the new machine – which has been dismantled and reassembled by NZ-based Richard Carr – the company is taking the opportunity to move closer to Christchurch with the switch planned for February.

Rolleston is less than a third of the 90 kilometre distance from the South Island city, and Gallop says the move is logical, with more than 100 tonnes of paper currently trucked to and from Ashburton weekly. While it still prints the tabloid Ashburton daily, that work has become only a fraction of its production with the growth of heatset magazine and catalogue work which is now 60 per cent of production.

“We’re also printing most of the independent community newspapers in the South Island and ten in the North Island,” he says. “It helps that the bosses are the salespeople.”

The US-built DGM press will print full colour on 48 out of a total of 64 tabloid pages with a hybrid mix of heatset and coldset which is unique in the country possible. The new 16-page Goss M-600 has full automation including closed-loop colour and a sheeter.

The Guardian Print business was split off from the newspaper in 2002, with Gallop and Mains becoming shareholders in 2012 after Fairfax Media relinquished a part interest.