Facilitating process improvement in the newspaper industry for more than 40 years

Stepper, Inc., has been a player in the newspaper industry since 1959. Our history goes back even further if you count the years that Founder and President Warren Hannon had a paper route as a boy.

Stepper knows how the newspaper product reaches its market, how the production process has changed, and the pressure to generate adverstising revenue. Warren Hannon also is a staunch believer in freedom of information. His mission in this business to keep newspapers economically viable.

For 45 years, Stepper has furnished large, custom-built newspaper packaging and labeling machinery to newspapers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Newsday, and The Wall Street Journal, along with their distributors, and many additional smaller dailies and shopper publications. Our equipment is at work for newspaper customers in Europe and the Pacific Rim.

Stepper’s experience has allowed us to work closely with our customers. As we analyzed newspaper production problems over the years, we came to an insight that changed the direction of our company. That insight was the recognition that the major bottleneck to all effective automation for packaging large sections and completes was the upstream feeding process.

No matter what kind of automated process you have in mind – newspapers or any other manufacturing, you need a reliable stream of product or the downstream operations are doomed to poor performance.

Armed with this insight and knowing how hard it is to feed bulky, insert-packed newspaper sections, we shifted our company focus. Instead of concentrating on low-volume, long lead-time, one-of-a-kind systems, we began to focus all our efforts on designing a modular hopper technology that could do what conventional hoppers cannot: feed the big stuff.

After several years of successful testing, our patented BIG STUFF® Newspaper Feeder is ready to ship as an OEM hopper. Users can build BIG STUFF® precisely into their packaging solutions and achieve significant process improvements. Read how Buhrs Zaandam is using Big Stuff Newspaper Feeders

Strong on reliability, simplicity and durability, BIG STUFF® provides the upstream reliability needed to support the performance of downstream operations.