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| We started at the Hauptbahnof...thought I should probably post a pic of it since I'm there a lot! (and it's a lot cooler than Heidelberg's Hpf. Just saying. :) |
So we went to Mannheimer Morgen on Tuesday, and after a long and convoluted walk there, discovered it's only about 5 minutes or so from Ulmenweg...but at least I got some exercise in!
Mannheimer Morgen is the regional newspaper, and this facility produces not only this paper, but 3 others as well. It was a pretty interesting tour (although pretty much everything was in German--but we had some English translation afterwards)--it reminded me of the TV show "How It's Made."
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| Printing Press...1500s style |
One interesting thing is that to supplement their revenue, Mannheimer Morgen runs a regional post. It is cheaper than DeutchPost, and they have drop boxes all over the city. Now I know what those blue boxes (compared to yellow for DeutschPost) are!
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| The mailroom |
We were shown a video, about 20 minutes, (in German of course, so forgive me if my information is incorrect), that described how Mannheimer Morgen came about. The present-day incarnation started about 60 years ago, and the printing process has gone through a lot of changes since then. They were not able to mass print in color until about 1980, but now they have the 3 colors and black. Later on we were shown how the rolls changed--they once had raised letters and were mirror images, but they now are just printed on aluminum. For each page there are four aluminum plates created--one for each color. They cannot be reused for printing, so they are recycled and are used in cars.
This is the storage room for the paper--it is 80% recycled (not 100% because then it would fall apart in the process). This is only enough paper for a week--that's a lot of paper!
After this we got to see to see the machinery in work. It was quite loud, but those newspapers were moving!
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| 1st Stop--printing and folding |
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| More printing--slightly different process |
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| The final process--putting up to 4 inserts in the paper and then | bagging them |
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So that was the end of our tour--and then they gave us a newspaper, a pretzel (of course!), a drink, and a mug. And all for 2e. :)
We were shown a video, about 20 minutes, (in German of course, so forgive me if my information is incorrect), that described how Mannheimer Morgen came about. The present-day incarnation started about 60 years ago, and the printing process has gone through a lot of changes since then. They were not able to mass print in color until about 1980, but now they have the 3 colors and black. Later on we were shown how the rolls changed--they once had raised letters and were mirror images, but they now are just printed on aluminum. For each page there are four aluminum plates created--one for each color. They cannot be reused for printing, so they are recycled and are used in cars. 
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