General News
12 August, 2022
Warracknabeal Rotary peeks at new press
THE Warracknabeal Rotary Club paid a visit to the Warracknabeal Herald office last week to take a look at and learn about the freshly installed colour printing press.
THE Warracknabeal Rotary Club paid a visit to the Warracknabeal Herald office last week to take a look at and learn about the freshly installed colour printing press.
The press, installed in December 2021 and in the process of being fully commissioned, has taken the Ward family business up a notch, able to now print three of their five mastheads in full colour.
Production manager Andrew Ward and proprietor David Ward told the Rotarians of their five-generational journey to bring the business to where it is today.
"We'd printed the paper in Warrack for the prior 30 years and there was an increasing demand for colour," David Ward said.
"This was the most practical way to provide colour through the Herald, rather than using the digital web press that we had been using over the past ten years, but only for small four-page colour sections."
The August 3 visit was a part of Rotary's weekly program, created to keep Rotarians aware of what is going on around them and continue to participate in their community.
Mr Ward recalled that Rotary president John Tonkin and the club were highly impressed by the sheer magnitude of the press.
"He said it was a significant and visionary project to undertake for a small family business and Rotary congratulated us on investing in the future of newspapers in the Wimmera-Mallee," Mr Ward said.
Mr Ward said that although commissioning of the press is still underway, the family has received many inquiries from other newspapers, requesting to be printed at the Warracknabeal site.
"The big players in the newspaper printing industry have closed down all their presses around the country and the Warrack press is the only full-colour press between Adelaide and Melbourne and Mildura and Hamilton,” he said.
"The logistics of printing newspapers in far-off printing sites was impractical and our family made the decision to invest in this new press to serve the community long into the future."