中文CH Media Print AG, one of Switzerland’s leading newspaper printing groups, has completed a major modernization of its Aarau facility, a project that signals quiet confidence in the future of printed newspapers even as the broader media landscape continues its digital reordering. The upgrade centers on a retrofit of its Koenig & Bauer Commander CT press and the installation of a third high-performance folding unit, a combination that lets the plant run three independent production streams simultaneously.
The new folder is not a routine replacement. It features improved paper guiding, drag rollers and web-handling technology designed to keep multiple streams stable at speed. Combined with integrated LED-UV printing capabilities and a new automated Ferag mailroom line, the investments provide greater scheduling flexibility, additional production capacity and the option to expand into semi-commercial print applications that sit alongside the core newspaper business.
The strategic logic is clear. Newspaper printing lives or dies on the ability to hit tight deadlines with consistent quality across very large volumes. A third folder means the Aarau plant can handle more titles, more sections and more versioning without bottlenecking at the folding stage. LED-UV drying shortens the path from press to finishing and reduces set-off issues, while an automated mailroom line attacked the part of the operation — inserting, bundling, addressing — that is most exposed to labor cost and most amenable to automation.
The investments strengthen CH Media’s three-site production network, which also includes facilities in St. Gallen Winkeln and Derendingen. Running three sites in parallel gives the group redundancy and load-balancing options that a single plant cannot match, and the Aarau upgrade deepens the capability of that network rather than merely patching a weak link. Importantly, CH Media has framed the project as support for its commitment to maintaining newspaper production well beyond 2035 — a notably long horizon in an industry often written off as sunset.
Heinz Meyer, Managing Director of CH Media Print, emphasized the company’s long-term vision. “The modernisation in Aarau proves that continuous innovation in newspaper printing as well as in the automation of finishing and logistics creates entirely new economic and qualitative perspectives,” he said. The wording is deliberate: the value is not only in faster printing but in the new economic and qualitative vantage points that automation opens.
There is a lesson here about how legacy print businesses survive. Rather than abandoning newspaper production, CH Media is investing in the parts of the workflow — folding, drying, mailroom — where automation delivers the clearest returns. Semi-commercial work, enabled by the added capacity and flexibility, diversifies revenue without forcing the company into unfamiliar markets overnight. The result is a more resilient operation that can absorb both the steady decline of some print volumes and the steady opportunity of others.
The project also reinforces CH Media’s long-standing collaboration with Koenig & Bauer, a relationship that spans multiple technology generations. In capital equipment, continuity of partnership matters: a vendor that understands a plant’s history can retrofit intelligently rather than rip and replace. The Commander CT retrofit, as opposed to a full press purchase, reflects that pragmatic, incremental philosophy — modernize the capability that matters, preserve the investment that still works.
For the Swiss print market, the Aarau modernization is a counter-narrative to the prevailing story of contraction. It suggests that newspaper printing, far from disappearing, is consolidating around operators willing to invest in automation, quality and logistical sophistication. Readers may consume news on phones, but physical newspapers remain a substantial, deadline-driven business — and the plants that will still be running in 2035 are the ones upgrading today.
CH Media’s bet is that newspapers will keep paying their way for another decade at least, especially when produced efficiently and supplemented by semi-commercial revenue. The Aarau upgrade is the machinery behind that bet, and its three independent streams are, in effect, three votes of confidence in print’s continuing place in the media mix.
Source: CH Media Print AG / Koenig & Bauer via INKISH.
The retrofit approach also carries a message for other legacy printers weighing investment. Full press replacement carries enormous capital cost and disruption; a targeted retrofit that adds a folder, modernizes drying and automates the mailroom can deliver much of the benefit at a fraction of the risk. For newspaper printers operating on thin margins and uncertain trajectories, that incremental philosophy may be the only financially rational path to modernization. CH Media’s example suggests that the future of newspaper printing belongs not to those who abandon it, but to those who upgrade it intelligently — preserving the parts that work while systematically removing the friction that does not.
There is a quiet confidence in that stance. Rather than framing print as a declining asset to be wound down, CH Media treats its plants as platforms to be continuously improved — a mindset that, repeated across the three-site network, accumulates into a durable competitive position. The Aarau modernization is one chapter in that longer story.
