Caxton’s interns on a factory tour

Caxton Local Media’s 2024 interns visited the company’s printing works located in Industria West in Johannesburg. The 20 interns went on the tour on Wednesday, April 10.

The tour began with the interns being welcomed by a team from Caxton’s Human Resources (HR). After some refreshments, each intern received a goodie bag. Some of the things inside the goodie bag were a pen, notebook, chocolates, gum, a peg, and a safety pin and the interns loved it. After an awesome introduction from the head of HR, Olga Lowe and her colleagues, the interns were accompanied to the factory, or printing press, for the tour.

The tour began with an introduction from the training facilitator, Riaan Kruger, who ensured that everyone was wearing comfortable, safety shoes and that the women were not wearing heels. The first department the interns went to was the pre-press department, this is where all the printing work starts. After each of the various branches is done with compiling and laying out their newspapers, they send it to the pre-press department, where Basil the gatekeeper receives the ‘dummy’ version of the paper. Basil checks how many pages there are, etc, and is in charge of the newspaper while it is running. Once everything is checked out, the newspaper is transferred onto printing plates from a computer to the plate machine. When the plate is ready to go to the press room, it goes through the automated punch and bend machine which punches holes into the newspaper and scans the plate for correct printing format.

Next, the printing plates are off to the printing department.

“Water and ink balance is essential, hence it is checked first,” Riaan said.

All pages are checked that they are in the register under the four printing colour units which are Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (CMYK). The newsprint ‘web’ travels in the printing tower while the colour is applied to it on both sides of the reel. There is usually one individual printing plate per colour. After printing, the process called folding takes place, this is where the printed ‘webs’ come together. The folder can produce ribbons and combine these ribbons in the pages of the newspaper, they are separated from each other and the folder lays down the newspaper copies onto the delivery belt.

The quality controller places the bundles on the vibrating table which ‘shakes’ everything until it is level. The inserting department team then put inserts, usually found in the middle, inside the newspaper. Caxton created employment opportunities for people as machines used to do inserts but now it is done by people.

When everything is finished, the newspaper goes to the mailroom and is ready for dispatch, which mostly happens overnight.

The interns loved the experience as they could not help but show their excitement through every process of the printing tour. The interns were then given certificates of attendance with love from Caxton, they took photos and showed gratitude, appreciation, and excitement with the team.