Ceremonies were held in early June to mark the completion of a new plant for Hokkaido Nikkan Sports Printing Company in Omagari, Hokkaido. The plant features one set of Mitsubishi's latest newspaper offset presses - the DIAMONDSTAR - and is configured to produce 40-page newspapers with 16 pages in full color. The Omagari site will publish The Asahi Shimbun and other newspapers for readers in Hokkaido,
relocating operations from its previous printing plant in Sapporo.
Fumio Wakisaka, General Manager of the Paper and Printing Machinery Division, along with others from Mitsubishi were on hand to witness the press start-up. To the fervent applause of all those in attendance, former President and current Corporate Advisor Shinichi Hakoshima of The Asahi Shimbun Company pressed the start button on the press and watched as printing speed climbed almost instantly to 90,500 copies per hour.
This is the fourth set of DIAMONDSTAR presses for The Asahi Shimbun Company. The other three sets were installed in the company's new Kyoto Plant and were commissioned in July 2004. From fabrication and installation to final print test runs, everyone involved in the Hokkaido installation worked as a team to meet the commissioning target. As planned, the press was able to begin full-scale commercial operations with the evening edition one day after the official turnover.
The Asahi Shimbun Company has been extremely pleased with the completeness and printing quality of the Mitsubishi DIAMONDSTAR newspaper offset press and during the recent ceremony presented General Manager Wakisaka with a Certificate of Appreciation.
The DIAMONDSTAR is proving to be a popular press with newspaper publishers in Japan and abroad. Already twenty sets comprising nearly 500 printing couples in total have been installed or are on order. The press was also the recipient earlier this year of the JSME (Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers) Award. The great success of the Hokkaido project served to further elevate Mitsubishi's technical prowess, spurring expectations of additional press orders in the near future.