Having saved it from likely and imminent destruction, a group of print history enthusiasts is raising funds to set one of the last Cossar newspaper presses in the world in a working environment.

The press is part of a larger unit previously at the Bush Telegraph in Pahīatua, in New Zealand’s North Island, and later owned by national publisher NZME., its future threatened by the sale of the building in which it was installed.

GXpress had been campaigning for recognition of the importance of the Cossar, a reel-fed flatbed machine uniquely able to print from letterpress forms without the need for a foundry to cast the curved plates required for faster rotary presses.

Designed by Scotsman Thomas Cossar, the eponymous press was evolved from the popular Wharfedale sheetfed press of the day, and made (as was the Wharfedale) in Otley, Yorkshire, England.

One Cossar press had been rescued from a newspaper in Crieff, Scotland and placed as a static exhibit in a museum in Edinburgh, and GXpress had found another in the West Somerset village of Williton, although its current location is unknown.

As far as is known, the Pahīatua presses, dating from 1924 and 1970, were the only others in the world. Although not the first – that credit apparently goes to another NZ publisher, that of the Wanganui Chronicle (as it was then spelled) in 1904 – the Pahīatua presses might have been the last.

Until a couple of years back, when NZME. sold the premises in which they were located, and needed the presses – each weighing an estimated 15 tons each – cleared within 40 days.

Things were looking grim, and could have ended badly, but for a happy coincidence.

Enter Henk Roede of the Museumdrukkerij (Printing Museum) in Grootegast in the northern Netherlands: With other members, he’d been looking for such a newspaper press, and had heard there might have been one in New Zealand a while back… but was he too late?

Happily no, but time was tight. Two engineers from Dutch specialist GWS Engineering Systems set off for Pahīatua, and with the help of Brian Puddick of PPS Engineering in Palmerston North, the presses were removed and the newer one despatched to Grootegast. We understand the older press was scrapped.

–see the video including footage of the removal of the press from New Zealand (starts at 0.17)

Henke Roed tells us the Cossar is now in store while new museum premises are prepared for the newspaper press and other printing equipment they have acquired, and a crowdfunding campaign has been set up to cover costs. The museum has also been given a large collection of printing machinery from another foundation, keeping members very busy moving and sorting through all this material. “We are now close to having the space ready for the Cossar, and hopefully, we will be able to bring it to our museum in the coming months,” he says.

Museumdrukkerij in Grootegast now has a wide range of other letterpress equipment, including Linotype linecasting machines, and has hopes of printing a promotional museum ‘newspaper’ and other material on the Cossar.

Hopefully, the press will put the Grootegast museum on the map, with what may be the last operational Cossar in the world. Don’t forget that you can help secure the project by making a donation.

And the Bush Telegraph? Editor Steve Carle, who had run the Cossar presses in his early days with the paper, and had campaigned for years to save them, lost his job and the paper when NZME. closed 14 community mastheads in December 2024, citing rising costs and falling advertising sales. However, he managed to rescue the masthead, and now publishes it and the Stratford & South under his De Lesseps Media.

Peter Coleman

• See more about the Cossar press on GXpress.net         

• Cossar tales: If you remember seeing or working on a Cossar press in the past, please drop me a line

Pictured: The ‘B’-type Cossar press with ‘P’-type folder, from the maker’s literature; the press awaits removal at Pahīatua; Henk (third from left) with museum members; part of the press is on the move. Below: more pictures of the press move, thanks to Brian Puddick of PPS