A double-width Goss colorliner 70 line (pictured) with eight units and two folders has been installed at the city-centre Royal Avenue plant, alongside an expanded Muller Martini mailroom.

The new kit joins two existing Goss presses, each with six Metroliner towers and a Universal tower and existing Muller Martini kit.

Over 5m newspapers are printed at the plant every week, including Irish editions of a number of UK national dailies and the Telegraph's own daily and weekly papers.

"We installed the new presslines to cope with the growing demand for colour and to allow us to print more stitched 32pp or 64pp newsprint magazines," said Richard Linden, Belfast Telegraph production controller.

In a heavily bolstered mailroom it has installed a six-station SLS 3000 inserter, two Newstacks with topsheet applicators, NewsGrip and Newsveyor conveyors, an Exacto trimming line and a PrintRoll storage set-up.

Linden praised Muller Martini's project team for completing the installation despite problems posed by the city-centre location.
"We're not a greenfield site, and we're now using every available inch of space. Muller Martini had to put in the new kit with the existing equipment running, so it wasn't easy," he said.

The deal is a second Belfast coup for Muller Martini this year, after it completed the mailroom of a new 15m print site for the Belfast Telegraph's Royal Avenue rival, The Irish News.

Completion of the project follows the March launch of a morning compact version of the Telegraph in addition to the newspaper's traditional afternoon broadsheet.

Linden added: "We chose to use Muller Martini and Goss equipment because we were already working with them and because we had good working relationships."