New presses ready to roll

Aug 01, 2008
By Mike Collier

RIGA - The oil and publishing industries may seem to go together as naturally and bacon and chalk, but in Latvia the two have a direct link.

An announcement by energy company Ventspils Nafta on 31st July says that the brand new printing presses at its subsidiary company JSC Preses Nams have been turned on and are undergoing final tests before going fully functional.

The newly-built book production plant is located in Ropaži parish, Riga and only the function of book sheet printing will remain in the previous production plant on Balasta dambis in Riga. All the remaining processes - folding, collecting, sewing, cutting, and gluing - will be performed in the new plant.

The new plant covers three entire blocks, reaches 7,000 square meters, and cost 13.5 million lats. Production capacity will eventually double from from the current 250,000-350,000 books per month up to 500,000-700,000 books per month.

Along with launching the new plant, JSC Preses nams says it has completely overhauled its production system, maintaining company's leading position in book production in the Baltics and North Europe, as one of  the 300 largest book production companies worldwide.

The company is particularly proud of its hi-tech machinery which now includes sheet-fed printing presses, rotary machines, folding, sewing and cutting devices, automatic hardbound and soft-cover book production lines.

Two new types of book production can also be offered for the first time: books with integral covers and hardbound books without sewing.

The first orders to be experimentally printed were received from the Russian publisher AST-Press, and are high-quality editions of Shakespeare plays. It comes as no surprise to learn that the Russian editions make plenty of use of gold foil press stamping.

Next on JSC Preses Nams 'to do' list is construction of another new printing plant - the newspaper and journal
production plant near Riga airport.

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