The proof is in the print

The proof is in the print

Forum Communications Printing uses state-of-the-art technology - and care - to deliver client dreams

By Kaylee Cusack, Senior Communications Specialist Minnkota Power Cooperative

The Highline Notes newsletter you receive every month doesn’t just … happen. It’s a collaboration between your team at Cass County Electric Cooperative (CCEC) and our business member Forum Communications Printing (FCP), a commercial printing and mailing company nestled in the northern industrial area of Fargo.

In his dual role of Plant Manager and Mail & Digital Operations Manager for the FCP Fargo location (one of three plants in the region), Jeff Foss’s kingdom is the facility’s sprawling production floor. That’s where the work of FCP Fargo’s 120 employees – from salespeople to machinists – collates into beautifully printed magazines, mailers, information sheets, education packets, postcards and a myriad of other paper-based projects.

“This press is brand new. We just put it in,” Foss said of the hulking Komori-brand eight-color sheetfed press stretching 50 feet beside him. “When the project goes through it’s done in one pass, versus the old press, where we ran it through, flipped that stack over, and printed the other side. Speed-wise, we’re at almost three times the speed of the old one.”

Foss and the FCP staff are investing in the enhanced speed of evolving technology to keep up with the requests of the company’s 1,200-plus recurring customers, which have spanned nearly every U.S. state and Canada. Pallets of college alumni magazines and grade-school planners wait to be sorted with smart mailing equipment, quickly replaced with bundles of the next client’s order.

CCEC Communications Manager Jocelyn Hovland says Highline Notes has been in this fast-paced rotation since 2009, and she has yet to notice a hiccup in the service she receives when she sends a newsletter design to print.

“You guys do a good job of making me feel really special when I’m just a minnow in this ocean,” Hovland told Foss during a recent tour. “It’s amazing. I had no idea!”

It takes a lot of electricity to power all of the innovative equipment that keeps the FCP ecosystem humming. The company’s new sheetfed press runs nearly 24 hours a day, producing around 15,000 sheets of product every hour. And that’s only one of several essential presses. Strong electricity is also needed for the lightning-fast mail sorter and the facility’s paper recycling system, which pulls paper trimmings through a series of tubes to be baled and delivered to the local recycling service.

The power need is high, but so is FCP’s trust that electricity will always be there. A recent upgrade to the substation that serves the facility and its neighbors will help to ensure reliability into the future.

“In the last 20 years, I can count the amount of times we’ve had problems on one hand,” Foss said. “When those web and sheetfed printers are running wide open, and you have a hard shutdown, it raises heck – everything wraps up. It’s a big thing if we get a power outage, and we’ve been very fortunate. We’ve had very few over the years.”