1936 - 1985

M&D Printing Company, Inc. of Henry traces its beginning to September 1, 1936, when Richard Moore Finfgeld (Dick) purchased the weekly Henry News-Republican from G.P. Scott & Sons. He converted the paper from printing on a sheetfed flatbed cylinder letterpress to a Duplex roll-fed perfecting and folding letterpress during World War II. For a small town weekly newspaper, the News-Republican ran a large number of pages and had a large typesetting department. To utilize this capacity on a full-time basis, the job printing department gradually expanded from hand-fed platen presses to automatic cylinder presses - all letterpresses.

Dick's son, Richard Kilgore Finfgeld (Moby), began working full time on the newspaper and job printing, following graduation from college in 1953. Two of the main categories of job printing during the 1950s and early 1960s were high school and college yearbooks and livestock catalogs. Offset printing was introduced for job printing in the early 1960s. The Henry News-Republican newspaper business was sold to George and Lillian Ziegler on August 1, 1966 and the name of the paper went with the sale. Moby and Dick Finfgeld retained the job printing business and equipment in the same building and adopted the new name M&D Printing Company, Inc.

M&D was the majority owner of a new web offset printing company, Riverside Press, Inc., which was formed April 1, 1968. This new company was located in the M&D building, which was expanded several times, and its primary purpose was to print newspapers and jobs for the three owners, M&D Printing Company, Inc., the Sanders family of Chillicothe, and George Ziegler of Henry.

M&D Printing continued to expand in the sheetfed offset printing, and Riverside Press also expanded in printing newspapers, tabloids, and publications. The original purpose of Riverside Press was to receive camera ready copy and do web offset presswork only, with the customers handling their own bindery, mailing and deliveries. Phototypesetting gradually became the dominant method of composition for M&D in the 1970s and the camera, platemaking, and bindery departments enlarged. Perfect binding was added in the early 1970s, and mailing service soon followed.

M&D Printing Company, Inc., bought out the other two stockholders of Riverside Press, and on October 1, 1981 Riverside Press was merged into M&D Printing Company, so that letterpress, sheetfed offset, web offset, bindery, typesetting, camera, platemaking, and mailing services became available from one source

1985 - 1996

In 1985, M&D erected a warehouse building (Phase I), primarily for the storage of rolls of paper at the rear of the Ford garage property on Route 29, about a mile from the downtown headquarters, which had been acquired a couple of years earlier. The warehouse building has four truck docks and measures 60 feet wide and 200 feet long (12,000 square feet). In 1986, M&D constructed a production building (Phase II) next to the Route 29 warehouse building. It is 60 feet wide and just short of 200 feet long, which makes a total of nearly 24,000 square feet at the Route 29 site. By contrast, the downtown building is about 18,000 square feet.

Production began at the Route 29 satellite plant in late 1986 and early 1987. The Route 29 facility was equipped with a six unit Color King offset press, a 12-pocket perfect binder with in-line trimmer, and a 6-pocket saddle stitcher-trimmer, plus numerous auxiliary machines to primarily produce booklets, paperback books, and catalogs, as well as doing specialized finishing operations on these jobs.

In January of 1992, M&D Printing was acquired by Kingery Printing Company of Effingham, Illinois. M&D Printing continued with business, and the company name was retained. For further information on Kingery Printing Company, see Bright New Future.

Also, in July 1992, the Six Unit Goss Newspaper Web was moved from the downtown location to the Route 29 location. This consolidated all the roll stock and web presses in one building making a more efficient operation.

1996 - Now

      3840 Beiren 5 Unit 38”x22.75” Full-size heatset web for commercial and publication printing This press is equipped with the latest spray dampening, auto circumferential and lateral register control technology. It features a Perretta Graphics ink control console and ink fountains equipped to deliver CIP 3 digital preset ink key information to all ink fountains. M&D Printing reduces paper waste by utilizing 50” roll stands on the dual Butler Splicers and the fully automated Oxy-Dry blanket wash system. The press is fully equipped to deliver two full webs of 32 standard size pages in one pass. The ability to slit, shift and prefold the product prior to the jaw folder allows a number of different in-line folding combinations for the client. Finally in 2006 a coating tower is scheduled to be installed that will dry trap aqueous coat in-line covers to a high gloss. This press will produce 5/5 single web work or 1/1-1/1, 2/2-2/2 double web projects at extremely high speeds.
      Proofing Devices Currently M&D Printing utilizes two Techsage Spinjet 2-sided Imposition proofers for low-res proofs. Our two HP5000 Inkjet contract proofers are driven by Kodak’s Matchprint Inkjet Rip. A major upgrade to the contract color inkjet system is in progress. This will offer improvements in both the accuracy of color, as well as the quality of the final proof itself.
      Soft / Virtual proofing M&D currently offers soft-proofing for content approval via PDF files transmitted over the internet. We are currently researching a virtual proofing system which will allow not only content, but accurate color approval via a calibrated monitor at the customer's site. This monitor will be calibrated exactly to a monitor at the Press Console at M&D ensuring color consistency just as predictable as any hard proof.
      Hunkeler Tipper Model VEA 520-K Large Format Inside & Outside Tipper Although M&D Printing has been tipping signatures together on the Inkjet table, this machine is tried and tested to tip both inside and outside the signature. This tipper can handle a minimum signature size of 4”x2 ¾”, and a maximum signature size of 20 3/8”x12 3/16”. It will paste a maximum of 1 15/16” off the edge. This investment will eliminate the need to go out of house and helps ensure M&D Printing has complete control of the mailing schedules.
      Co-Mailing Utilizing cutting edge technology, M&D Printing will reduce your mailing delivery cycle time as well as reduce the postage costs from 5 – 10%. M&D Printing worked closely with the United States Postal Service during the development and qualification of our unique co-mingling process. The Postal Service has approved additional rate incentives to Periodicals currently mailed in sacks as stand-alone mailings, to encourage their participation in the co-mingled mail process. Co-mailed, or “Co-mingled Mail” is an automated process of merging and sorting individually inkjet addressed copies of two or more publications together as a single mailing. These combined titles are bundled together, placed on a pallet and drop shipped to the Postal Service facility. The result is a single mail entry that obtains a finer presort level.