The American daily The New York Times of Tuesday, September 19, 2023 features a particularly thick cover. Produced at the request of the Rimowa luggage brand, this 55 g/m 2 instead of the usual 42 g/m 2 was produced at Midi Print, a Ricconobo Group printing plant located in Gallargues-le-Montueux in the Gard region of France.
We asked Loic Le Deuff, site manager, to give us a behind-the-scenes look at the production of this cover, which is distributed throughout the south of France.
Firstly, in order to meet deadlines, the printer spent more time preparing the printing machine and setting up the right copies, compared with a standard job without paper mixing.
Riccobono then used the Coldset printing process. "This process is quite virtuous these days (from an ecological point of view), as it doesn't require an oven to dry the ink or a UV lamp to polymerize the ink or a drying agent to set the ink." stresses Loic Le Deuff, director of Midi Print.
He continues: "The two main challenges in producing this cover are managing web tensions on the machine and in the folder infeed, and output quality at stacker level (packaging in packs) to have a streak-free product, as we're on a Coldset printing process (no drying, only ink penetration into the paper)."
With the large number of titles printed by the press ( Le Figaro, Le Monde, L'Équipe ...), Midi Print regularly carries out this type of marketing communication.
"At our Midi Print site in Gallargues-le-Montueux, we print all national press titles with the exception of L'Humanité production of which is due to start in June 2024. This represents 13 national and two international titles, says the manager. This is the strength of the Riccobono Group, which has been able to federate and optimize press printing throughout the country by distributing these printing points and becoming the major partner of publishers for newspaper and magazine printing."
