With reels stacked to one side and copies running from the press fly, Washington Post’s new Dulles print facility is beginning to look like a serious pressroom.

Staff from the paper’s soon-to-be-closed Springfield, Virginia print site have been familiarising themselves with the single-width Urbanite-based press, while engineers – including some from auto-register-and-density system vendor DCOS – make final adjustments. “They’re doing a great job,” says Tom Loesch, whose ImPressions Worldwide business has supplied and installed the press. “We are in test run and training mode now.”

• This recent video shows the new press during a test and training run.

An eight-station Müller Martini SLS 3000 inserter has been relocated to Dulles, with space allocated for bindery equipment. There are also plans to relocate the two Konica Minolta presses – a KM-1e UV inkjet and a toner-based C6100 with built-in folding and collating, and an inline bookletmaker – from the former Wimsatt Road site.

WP Print Services, which emphasises its credentials – “in the printing business since 1877” – produces special products for the masthead and a range of items offered on the Washington Post website, including a ‘birthday book’ featuring front pages from the recipient’s birth date and each year since, plus personalised greeting message.

The new, smaller plant in Sterling, close to Dulles airport and the Loudoun Gateway Metro station, replaces the 46,500m2 plant in nearby Springfield, with its 46-year-old Mitsubishi double-width presses, affecting the jobs of 118 staff, about half of the previous total. Legal WARN notices were issued on October 7.

In busier days, Washington Post had employed a total of eight of the ten-unit Mitsubishi double-width presses, commissioned at Springfield and a new plant in College Park, Maryland, in January 1999.

• This 11-year-old YouTube video posted by Ben Sumner – showing the scale of the Springfield site – is one of several to be found on YouTube.

By contrast, the single refurbished Goss Urbanite consists of 28 printing units in two- or three-high groups – capable of printing full colour on every page – with three folders.

Pictures and test-run video with thanks to ImPressions Worldwide.