RIND Survey...March 2020 RIND Survey 3 FROM THE EDITOR ‘G rowing big in digital’ was the theme for Digital Media India 2020 organised by WAN-IFRA at Holiday Inn, Delhi Aerocity

A Journal of the Press Institute of India - Research Institute for Newspaper Development

March 2020 | Volume 41 | Issue 3 | Rs 50 www.pressinstitute.in

RIND Survey

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HOW TO EARN MORE FROM DIGITAL IS THE CHALLENGEAt WAn-IFRA’s Digital Media India 2020 Conference held in new Delhi recently, several ideas were thrown up – including those on digital journalism, digital advertising revenue and alternate revenue streams. Magdoom Mohamed, WAn-IFRA South Asia chief, says one thing is clear: everyone is facing challenges in print advertising growth, and revenue from digital is not commensurate with the loss they face in print advertising. The Internet is 25 years old in India and there are an estimated 600 million Internet subscribers, yet digital revenue has remained at less than 5 per cent of overall revenue, he points out. Magdoom, organiser and curator of the conference each year, says it is important that news publishers focus their energy on creating compelling content that readers and advertisers are willing to pay for. Snapshots from the conference, above.

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3March 2020 SurveyRIND

FROM THE EDITOR

‘Growing big in digital’ was the theme for Digital Media India 2020 organised by WAN-IFRA at Holiday Inn, Delhi Aerocity on 18-19

February. The effort was to address the challenges faced by news media companies in the region. In his opening remarks, Magdoom Mohamed, managing director, WAN-IFRA South Asia, mentioned how the Indian news media has gone through tough times in the recent past, how he had heard of declines of 20-30 per cent in print advertising revenue and how digital revenue was not growing enough to compensate. The wider fear, he said, was that such a decline was due to structural changes in the print industry, not just due to a pretty bad patch in the economy. The challenge, therefore, he pointed out, was how to grow digital revenue and its share in the overall revenue pie. Every year, the WAN-IFRA India team takes a lot of effort putting together the annual conference/ expo and DMI conferences, speaking with various people, attempting to curate programmes that would satisfy expectations. Participation at this year’s DMI Conference wasn’t as high as in some of the earlier years. One wonders whether it is due to participation fatigue – after all, many of these subjects are talked about and discussed ad infinitum. Magdoom, however, wishes that there be more participation at such conferences for “it is imperative that we give our people access to knowledge from these events to face the future confidently”.

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Lisa MacLeod (article on page 6) has made a couple of interesting predictions in the context of digital revenue and the ad-tech ecosystem contracting. The days for third-party cookies to track user behaviour on websites may be coming to an end, she says, providing an opportunity for publishers – to get hands on first-party data, return to contextual advertising, get to know content preferences and user behaviour. MacLeod’s second point is about universal access to the Internet. She refers to a plan in the works in South Africa that addresses the following: free public access to the Internet at government sites, zero-rated access to government websites and data, free public Wi-Fi, the provision of free basic Internet as a municipal service, digital literacy programmes, minimum protections in the

provision of free access to the internet, and oversight and monitoring of the progressive realisation of free access to the Internet. Could be an example India could follow at some stage – nothing like cutting data costs and providing ease of access to the Internet.

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There’s a human interest sort of story in this issue (page 8) written by current World Editors Forum President Warren Fernandez which not only makes for interesting reading but also throws up some pertinent points. Fernandez was in Paris to attend the board meeting of WEF, the global network of editors. Now, there were protests and transport chaos, the result of an industrial action called by French unions to block government plans to reform the country’s pension programme. Despite the odds, the WEF meetings went on as planned, thanks to the French media group, Les Echos Le Parisien, which opened its offices for the visitors – “we managed to just get on with the job sans frills, regardless of the circumstances, just as so many good journalists do time and again in the newsrooms we lead around the world”. Here are the pertinent points Fernandez makes in his article:

- The media is under increasing pressure from political leaders not averse to playing up populist sentiments.

- Political polarisation is also intensifying in some democratic countries, split along class or ideological lines, with economic challenges turning into social and partisan divides.

- The role of trusted voices – objective and reliable editors, reporters and news organisations – is very important

- Fake news and misinformation is fuelling a desire among audiences for authoritative reports and commentaries to help them make sense of it all.

- The aim (for the media): to ensure that society continues to be well served with the credible and reliable information so essential if democracy is to survive and financial markets to thrive.

Sashi [email protected]

Growing digital income as much a challenge as providing credible news

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Cover page images: WAN-IFRA

2020: End of an era as the third-party cookie crumbles 6Lisa Macleod reports on a WAN-IFRA India Conference session

Making footprints, hopefully, amid testing times 8Warren Fernandez

The rise of AI in the newsroom 11Simone Flueckiger

Technical considerations for publisher-advertising alliances 14Chris Sutcliffe

Students gain from workshops on developments in printing 16 T.K.S. Lakshmipriya

Prospects look bright for growth of printing, packaging 18 Pamex 2020

Printers meet to discuss state of industry and its future 21 World Print & Communication Forum Conference

Industry Updates 23

General News 37

Events Calendar 41

March 2020 | Volume 41 | Issue 3SurveyRIND


‘BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT WITH WAN-IFRA

As we start the new decade, it feels like all things digital are under pressure – the adtech ecosystem is contracting, Facebook is being slammed as usual, Google is in a showdown with French publishers, and cookies are errr... crumbling, writes Lisa MacLeod

2020: End of an era as the third-party cookie crumbles

Let’s start with the cookie problem. For almost 25 years marketers have relied on third-party cookies to track user

behaviour on websites: most marketing and adtech platforms use them extensively to target and re-target consumers with “relevant” ad material.

Now new technology like Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention and Firefox’s Enhanced Tracking Protection tighten up previous loopholes and block cookies by default, and Chrome is about to join the fray with similar controls.

GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act – both aimed at increasing privacy measures for consumers – as well as browser, network and app-level blockers, mean the little happy trackers’ days are numbered. And so, possibly, are the days of many marketers and ad tech players…

For publishers, however, I see an opportunity as the market pivots to other data sources like first-party data, and a return to contextual advertising, which will require intelligence

about content preferences, user behaviour and preferably a stack of logged-in users.

While this may not be to everybody’s advantage, publishers that started years ago with registration walls, registered commenters, paid subscribers, newsletter databases and advanced content analytics (like Tiso Blackstar for example – #justsaying) are already sitting pretty with a ton of highly valuable first-party data. Can’t wait to see where this goes!

Data cloud consolidationMy second prediction is further consolidation

in the overcrowded adtech and data management space, as the big cloud operators are hoovering up the smaller players, integrating back office and front office services, and providing end-to-end data collection and service management. Already there has been a big reduction in the number of DMPs, DSPs and SSPs in the market

– and the trend I believe will continue.The first of these big merger / acquisitions was

Salesforce which bought out leading DMP Krux for $700m in 2016. Oracle acquired Krux’s rival


DMP Bluekai in 2015, and this year took on independent viewability and ad measurement vendor Moat. AppNexus was bought by AT&T, paywall management company Piano and DMP Cxense have just merged, and Rubicon is the first company to directly partner with Google’s DBM on facilitating PMPs. Wonder if there might be a merger in the offing?

Data prices must fallMy third prediction will be around a uniquely

South African problem: the enormous cost of data in this country. A number of prominent organisations: Media Monitoring Africa, South African National Editors’ Forum, Interactive Advertising Bureau of South Africa, and Association for Progressive Communications have put forward a seven-point plan for universal access to the internet.

The plan addresses the following: free public access to the Internet at government sites, zero-rated access to government websites and data, free public Wi-Fi, the provision of free basic Internet as a municipal service, digital literacy programmes, minimum protections in the provision of free access to the Internet, and oversight and monitoring of the progressive realisation of free access to the Internet.

We can only hope that the government takes this seriously – most especially points 3 and 4, as do the telcos, and we start getting some relief on data costs – not only to help lift publishers but for all business and services in South Africa.

Until that happens, the #datafree ecosystem – pioneered by Gour Lentell and his company Binu – is also making waves, and I can see this exploding next year, simply because there is a hungry market out there. Already heading for two-million users on their #datafree messaging app Moya, Binu is building an environment of providers that are furnishing the data costs to reach and service new audiences.

Tiso Blackstar’s #datafree app powered by Binu, SA News Live, has over 365k monthly UBS, and our first campaigns have shown

astonishing CTRs and results. Definitely a space to be playing in.

The heat is on the duopolyFacebook and Google are under pressure, as

ever, with Mark Zuckerberg making more frequent – and increasingly excruciating – trips to congressional inquiries to be grilled by politicians, and Google embroiled in a landmark argument with publishers in France over their assertion that they should be paid for Google publishing news “snippets” along with search results.

The spat is the result of a new law, the EU Copyright Directive – passed in March, which forced through new copyright rules, one of which allows publishers to demand payment for these snippets. Google has called their bluff, stating it will stop showing the previews unless the publishers opt in to allow it to show for free. No payments will happen. At the moment the publishers have chosen to opt in to mitigate an estimated 30pc to 40pc drop in click-through traffic – and are apparently planning an antitrust case against Google at the same time.

While the fight with Google continues, Facebook is doing exactly the opposite and playing publisher’s friend – as usual only for a select beta group of publishers – and paying them for content for their newly launched News Feed.

I predict more bad PR, more tough questions and the threat of further regulation for the duopoly as 2020 rolls on.

(Courtesy: WAN-IFRA / World News Publishing Focus. The writer is the former

head of digital at Tiso Blackstar, South Africa, and a current vice-president of WAN-IFRA.

These predictions were first published on BizCommunity.)

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A visit to strike-torn Paris in December, for a World Editors Forum Board meeting, got the editor of the Straits Times, and current president of WEF, Warren Fernandez, thinking about what may await us in 2020. Amid the growing polarisation of societ-ies – with widening divides along income, class, ethnic and national lines – the media has the added responsibility of clarifying issues, establishing facts, countering false-hoods, he says

Making footprints, hopefully, amid testing times

As I struggled past the crowd, I could not help but feel sorry for these unfortunate folk, caught in the wrong place and time,

collateral damage in an industrial action called by French unions to block government plans to reform the country’s generous and convoluted pension programmes.

At the back of my mind was also the question of how my wife and I were going to get out of the city before further escalation of the strike, as union leaders had promised in the weeks ahead, to press their case.

There had been fighting words on all sides. French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe had told the national assembly that his government would not relent on the reforms. “My determination, and that of the government... is total,” he declared.

Not surprisingly, this sparked an equally robust response from union chief Philippe Martinez, the general secretary of the powerful and hardline CGT union. “We’re hearing so much bull****... ever since Emmanuel Macron

arrived, he’s done nothing except to divide our citizens. It’s scandalous,” he snapped back, signalling no let-up in the protests even as the Christmas holidays loomed.

So the days ahead looked grim. I had come to Paris to attend the board meeting of the World Editors Forum (WEF), the global network of editors, which I chair. Despite the transport chaos, we had decided to proceed as scheduled, with some last-minute changes in the programme.

We moved our meetings to venues we could get to on foot from our hotels. Thanks to a show of solidarity by French media group, Les Echos Le Parisien, which kindly opened its offices for our use, we managed to just get on with the job sans frills, regardless of the circumstances, just as so many good journalists do time and again in the newsrooms we lead around the world.

As dramatic news events unfolded in the world around us around us my colleagues and I focused our minds on how to address the many challenges we were facing in our newsrooms.


We swapped notes on the dire situation in places like Brazil, Mexico, Pakistan and India, where the media is under increasing pressure from political leaders not averse to playing up populist sentiments, sometimes deliberately taunting or turning against the messengers when they did not like the message, but mostly for electoral effect.

Political polarisation was also intensifying in some democratic countries, split along class or ideological lines, with economic challenges turning into social and partisan divides. In the aftermath of the most divisive election campaign that Britain has seen in decades, colleagues from newsrooms there lamented how the media and voters had been manipulated and misled, not just allegedly by foreign players out to influence the outcome, but by the very political parties that were contesting to form the government.

The role of trusted voices – objective and reliable editors, reporters and news organisations – was thus all the more important, to help voters make sense of the welter of claims and counterclaims, information and misinformation, as one editor noted, to general agreement.

There were hopeful reports too. From our colleagues in Norway, Finland and Germany, we learnt that the proliferation of “fake news”, as well as the information overload arising from rapid and relentless technological disruption, was fuelling a desire among audiences for authoritative reports and commentaries to help them make sense of it all.

Several editors noted a growth in subscriptions, especially for digital products, with revenues from these helping to make up for the inexorable downward drift in print

The aim: to ensure that society continues to be well served with the credible and reliable information so essential if democracy is to survive and financial markets to thrive. Simply leaving this to the free market, and expecting business as usual to deliver the public good of quality journalism, was deemed as dangerous wishful thinking.

Amid the growing polarisation of societies – with widening divides along income, class, ethnic and national lines – the media has the added responsibility of clarifying issues, establishing facts, countering falsehoods, and hopefully helping to forge some sense of consensus on the collective way forward, on matters as real and pressing as income inequality, climate change, gender disparities, nationalist and nativist pressures, and the strategic rivalry between China and the US.

To try to live up to the task, WEF editors pledged to work together to tackle our own challenges – recruiting and retaining talented journalists, training and skilling up our newsrooms, finding new ways to engage with and serve our readers – even as we resolved to collectively mark World News Day on Sept 28, when we will bring together newsrooms across the world to showcase the vital importance that professional news organisations play in serving our communities at this time of disruption and change.

Coming in from the north-west, I watched on the flight tracker as the plane made its way down the coast of peninsular Malaysia, then took a sharp left turn to hover over the Riau archipelago, Karimun and the islands called Durian, Sugi Batam and Bintan, before another deft turn that brought Singapore into sight.

Then, the plane descended quickly to Changi Airport and its wheels touched down. Truly, it felt good to be home, in safe and secure Singapore. After wrapping up our meetings, I had braved the crowds and traffic mayhem to catch a flight out of Paris on Monday evening, the day before the strike flared up and turned violent in some parts of France.

ST Illustration CEL GULAPA.

circulations and advertising revenues. From Portugal, we heard how the information minister had recently stepped up and convened a meeting of news organisations and other stakeholders, to consider ways to restructure the media industry.

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you, dear reader, these words from A Psalm Of Life by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, as a little seasonal gift, with my warm wishes for the year ahead, come what may.

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,Life is but an empty dream!For the soul is dead that slumbers,And things are not what they seem.Life is real! Life is earnest!And the grave is not its goal;Dust thou art, to dust returnest,Was not spoken of the soul.Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,Is our destined end or way;But to act, that each to-morrowFind us farther than to-day.Art is long, and Time is fleeting,And our hearts, though stout and brave,Still, like muffled drums, are beatingFuneral marches to the grave.In the world’s broad field of battle,In the bivouac of Life,Be not like dumb, driven cattle!Be a hero in the strife!Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!Let the dead Past bury its dead!Act, – act in the living Present!Heart within, and God o’erhead!Lives of great men all remind usWe can make our lives sublime,And, departing, leave behind usFootprints on the sands of time;Footprints, that perhaps another,Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,Seeing, shall take heart again.Let us, then, be up and doing,With a heart for any fate;Still achieving, still pursuing,Learn to labour and to wait.

(Courtesy: WAN-IFRA Blog / World News Publishing Focus. The writer is editor-in-chief

of the Straits Times, Singapore, and current president of the World Editors Forum. This

article was first published in the Straits Times.)

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But alas, just as we landed, a voice overhead warned that the forecast in Singapore was not exactly for sunny skies ahead. “Please fasten your seat belts; some turbulence ahead,” the pilot had intoned during the long flight.

With the economy in the doldrums, roiled by US-China tensions over trade – on hold for now but unlikely to dissipate entirely any time soon – the fallout from the impeachment of the US President, the rush to implement Brexit early next year and, closer to home, the bitter political wrangling over who will be the next prime minister in Malaysia, all signs point to a bumpy ride ahead. As a small, open economy, subject to the ebb and flow of global currents, Singapore will inevitably be shaken and swayed as these events play out in the months to come.

Meanwhile, on the home front, a crucial election looms, with leadership transition on the cards, and what seems to be shaping up to be a bruising battle at the polls. So, as we hovered in the sky, these questions came to mind: Will Singapore succumb to the polarisation seen elsewhere, with political players ready and willing to exploit economic and social divides for electoral gain, drawing on tactics and playbooks that seem to have paid political dividends, regardless of the social cost?

Might the nativist tendencies that have split so many countries, with populists fuelling fears over immigration, playing up ethnic and religious divisions, or whipping up anti-elite sentiments, also emerge here in the heat of the hustings, when emotion might trump reason, even among a usually sober and pragmatic electorate?

And just how would it heal the rifts that ensue if that happens, given how protests in places like Hong Kong and Paris are leaving deeply wounded societies in their wake? Already, there are troubling signs of how some of these concerns might play out, so indeed, it would be wise to brace ourselves for some turbulence ahead.

At testing times like this, I often turn to wiser souls for insights and comfort, and so I offer



From creating news stories automatically to optimising content delivery, more and more news-rooms worldwide are using artificial intelligence to automate and augment their reporting and other newsroom processes. The second chapter of WAN-IFRA’s Trends in Newsrooms 2019 Report, excerpted here, examines this rapidly developing trend. Simone Flueckiger of WAN-IFRA has the story

The rise of AI in the newsroom

“If you think about the news process, you have essentially three main steps of value creation: news gathering, production,

and distribution,” says Francesco Marconi, The Wall Street Journal’s R&D chief and author of the upcoming book, Newsmakers: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Journalism. “AI is already impacting and transforming all of these different areas,” he says.

Sifting, analysing masses of textNaturally, news gathering is a major part of

any reporter’s job. AI can cut down on time spent on this task, help journalists gather insights more quickly and even offer a potential competitive advantage.

With that in mind, in 2017 Reuters launched a tool called News Tracer, designed to sift through millions of tweets per day to flag potential breaking news events, often identifying them more quickly than other news organisations could, the company said. Similarly, in late 2018, Reach in the UK announced some of its regional newsrooms would deploy an off-the-shelf AI-powered tool to monitor some 60000 online sources and alert journalists to “pre-trending” stories.

AI systems also show potential for investigative journalism by helping reporters analyse huge amounts of data and enabling them to quickly find relationships among different entities. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) uses an AI-powered tool to automatically recognise and index text documents. That software was used by ICIJ reporters to process 13.4 million confidential documents relating to offshore investments, an effort that facilitated a blockbusting journalistic series, Paradise Papers: Secrets of the Global Elite.

Promises of efficiency and scaleAt the production level, the use of algorithms

promises efficiency and scale, be it by automatically generating news texts based on structured data, switching between media types, or repurposing content for different platforms.

Automated content generation is already fairly prevalent, with a number of larger newsrooms using natural language generation to produce

“commodity news” to expand their coverage and free up journalists’ time so that they can focus on more in-depth reporting tasks.

The Associated Press (AP), where Marconi previously co-led content automation and


artificial intelligence efforts, started automating its corporate earnings reports a few years ago, enabling the news agency to increase the number of companies it reported on from 300 to 4000. Similarly, MittMedia, one of Sweden’s largest local media groups, launched a sports bot to cover lower-level leagues and a wider range of sports, generating 41000 articles in 2017-2018 and even helping drive paid subscriptions.

From data to musical chordsOther examples of how AI can enhance

production include automated creation of videos from text, and data sonification. The latter technique, which The Wall Street Journal is experimenting with, algorithmically transforms numerical data into musical chords to make charts and data visualisations accessible to visually impaired people. “It’s an emerging example, but it’s fascinating how AI allows us to create news experiences that we never thought we would,” Marconi says.

As for distribution, the third step in the news value chain, AI can help determine the best time

to publish a story or personalise the delivery of content to the audience. Media organisations including Reuters, the Chicago Tribune, Hearst and CBS Interactive deploy the AI-powered content distribution platform TrueAnthem to determine what stories should be re-circulated and when they should be posted to social media platforms. To make those decisions, the system tracks signals that predict performance, including the level of audience engagement, publishing frequency, and time of day.

Regardless of how well algorithms are programmed, the conclusions drawn by machines are not always correct. Journalists must always question outcomes, validate methodologies and ensure explainability. That is no easy task; algorithms are difficult to audit and, as such, to hold accountable.“The insights generated through AI should be

used as a compass that guides reporting, not as a clock that provides infallible information,” says Marconi. “AI is created by humans, and it can make mistakes – errors that often result from the biases in how AI is designed, as well

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The Wall Street Journal has formed a media forensics committee to train journalists. Also, The New York Times is exploring how to leverage blockchain to map the provenance (origin and modification history) of data. And Reuters has cooperated with a specialist production company to create a deepfake video, to test whether its user-generated content team can tell the file is not authentic.

(This article had appeared in WAN-IFRA’s Technology Guide and Directory 2019.)

as the data used to train it. The output is only as good as its input.”

Increasingly, it is being acknowledged that AI software is prone to the same errors and biases that humans exhibit and can even exacerbate those inequities, since they are often implemented on massive scales with little oversight.

Investigating algorithmsA ProPublica investigation into machine-

generated risk scores used by government criminal justice officials found the software to be biased against black defendants. That kind of investigative reporting will increasingly be needed to ensure that in an algorithmically-driven world, software is held accountable.

Another emerging risk of AI-driven content generation has manifested itself in the form of so-called deep-fakes. These are images or audio files generated or altered with the help of AI to dupe an audience into thinking they are real. The prospect of this kind of generation of misinformation is deeply troublesome. For example, fake videos can make politicians appear to say things they never said, or falsely implicate people in crimes.

The deep-fake phenomenon also poses a threat to journalistic trust and integrity. It means that in addition to carrying out traditional fact-checking processes, journalists must also be vigilant for the possibility that videos or images might have been falsified.

Some newsrooms are taking proactive measures to deal with deep-fakes. For example,

With expert interviews and case studies from around the world, the second chapter of WAN-IFRA’s Trends in Newsrooms 2019 Report examines the ways artificial intelligence is affecting and transforming all steps of the news process, from news gathering to production and distribution. The chapter is free to download for WAN-IFRA Members and can be purchased by non-members. [See www.wan-ifra.org/tin_ai_newsroom.]

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Trends in Newsrooms

Carbon-neutral Drytac booth at FESPA 2020Drytac will again provide all of the official show graphics for the forthcoming FESPA Global Print Show in Madrid, Spain. In addition, Drytac has announced its booth (5-C15) will be certified carbon neutral and packed with new products. Following Drytac’s partnership with FESPA in 2019, which saw its media used across the Messe Munich, this year’s show will feature wall, window, floor and other graphics products installed across the IFEMA Exhibition Centre’s extensive show space from March 24th to 27th. The Drytac booth, designed with stand construction partner Driscoll Brothers, has been certified carbon neutral thanks to a carbon offset programme that supports ecological projects across the world. These include reforestation initiatives that benefit people and the planet.



Just bringing competing publishers on board would seem to be the biggest hurdle to overcome in forming an ad alliance. And indeed, in most cases, that’s true. But the technology issues associ-ated with making it work bring their own set of challenges. Story by Chris Sutcliffe

Technical considerations for publisher-advertising alliances

Advertising alliances are very much en vogue among publishers, who recognise that providing comparable audience

sizes to the Duopoly, with greater guarantees of audience fidelity and data, makes them an attractive proposition for brands. The adage that such alliances provide “ease of use at scale” is becoming more true than ever, with some alliances offering access that goes beyond digital advertising to incorporate other media in which the publishers can sell ad space.

Quite apart from the cultural challenges of convincing a raft of different newspapers

– many of whom do not share one another’s values and politics and have previously considered themselves competitors – there are tech limitations and considerations that go into creating effective alliances that deliver on their potential. From single sign-in to ensuring consistency of cross-device experience, the challenge for publishers in alliances is in marrying common goals to functional tech.

Single sign-in – the good, the bad...Mário Matos is a member of the Nonio project

Steering Committee. Nonio, which comprises

some of the largest Portugese publishers, was designed to offer advertisers access to audience segments with 100 percent accuracy based on pooled first-party data. That is based on creating a single sign-in, the complexity of which is an ongoing concern: “It looks complicated because it is complicated

when you have 70 different websites, 20 different technologies, sites and apps that we built 10 years ago, and some from this year, so the main issue that took almost one and a half years was addressing the technical issues. A stable log-in with six different companies and 70 different websites – to make a stable log-in and it’s not yet stable – on Safari, it doesn’t work. It simply doesn’t work.”

The difficulty of creating a single sign-in for users arises both from the cultural side – as seen with the reticence publishers initially had to using Subscribe With Google, which meant handing a portion of the process to a competitor, despite the convenience – and in the need to balance publisher and audiences’ data concerns equally.

Bertrand Gié heads France’s Figaro Group’s News Division, which includes the daily Le


Figaro, and is the president of GESTE. He says: “Today, [targeting is] based on the cookie, but cookies are imperfect, we are always trying to figure out who is behind the screen, because you don’t really know who is behind them, and with GDPR, on their way out and e-privacy could be the last nail in the cookies coffin.”

As a result, Gié argues that a single sign-in system that does not share information about a user beyond the bounds of their activity on an individual publisher’s site but effectively allows publishers to have a base of logged-in users from whom they can gather data whenever they alight upon a publishers’ website is a workable compromise between publisher and audience desires.

Solving pre-existing tech issues In the UK, Project Ozone, a joint collaboration

among some of the country’s biggest newspapers, including The Guardian, News UK titles, The Telegraph, and local publisher Reach, was set up to address one of the failings of the digital advertising model that had been specifically created by tech – that of revenue leakage along the value chain. Danny Spears, former head of The Guardian’s programmatic advertising team and now lead on the project, explains:“Both of our offerings are underpinned by

Ozone’s common ID, which helps our publishers reduce their dependency on third-party IDs and which provides a foundation for match rates and ultimately, monetisation. ...This is the beating heart of the Ozone proposition.”

As part of that ongoing effort to ensure that tech – and the opacity of much of the digital advertising world – Ozone in turn partnered with ad exchange OpenX. Despite all these efforts, The Guardian Chief Revenue Officer Hamish Nicklin has acknowledged that, as a result of the complexity and interconnectivity of digital advertising, sometimes Guardian data and inventory will be “flying around” the many other thousands of players in the chain, many of whom The Guardian does not contract with.

Ensuring data privacy That issue brings another one to light – privacy

legislation means ad alliances need to ensure that the first-party data they sell as part of the exchange is compliant with rules governing data privacy, while also being useful to the buyers. WouterHulst, project manager on behalf of publishers for the NLProfiel initiative, which is focused on making demographic segmentation data available to advertisers on their own terms, explains the challenge: “Our aim for the second half of the year is to have a joint product offering for advertisers where they get control and see if it works. We will automatically turn off advertising on negative content. They can use all the data we have and connect it to their own data in a safe, GDPR-compliant fashion [with] quality and most importantly, transparency.”

So while publishers have recognised the need to put aside their differences in order to provide a credible alternative to the Duopoly to maximise their advertising potential, they are still working through the technological aspects of advertising alliances. It is to be hoped that the technical hurdles can be overcome, since even the most established alliances are really in the early stages of a long-term play. Stay tuned.

(This article had appeared in WAN-IFRA’s Technology Guide and Directory 2019.)

Report on Publisher Ad Alliances releasedWAN-IFRA published a Report, ‘Publisher ad alliances – Why they make sense and how they work’, last year, which can be downloaded free of charge by WAN-IFRA members and purchased by non-members. More information about the report is available at www.wan-ifra.org/ad_alliances_report.

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Students gain from workshops on developments in printingThe Department of Printing Technology, School of Engineering, Avinashilingam Institute, Coimbatore, conducted two interesting workshops recently. The first was on Recent Trends in Offset Technology, the second on Printing Substrates and its uses – Dye-Sublimation

On January 22, Director K.N. Raja Rao and Dean S. Maragatham ‘click-started’ live streaming of the inaugural function,

the first time such programmes were streamed live. The 60 participants included students of MA Mass Communication and Diploma in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, apart from students of Printing Technology.

Raja Rao said offset printing was a mature technology that was still evolving along with advancements on the digital and electronic fronts. Maragatham mentioned the department being well-known for skill-oriented teaching methods and complimented the department for organising the workshop with intensive hands-on sessions.

R. Senthilkanth, plant head - South Zone, The Hindu, provided a first-hand overview of offset technology –sheet-fed and web – while touching on aspects relating to components, operations, quality and maintenance.

A. Arulmozhi, associate professor attached to the department, explained the practical aspects in operating offset machines, and the use of inks, chemicals, blankets and paper. Participants were taken to the department’s new printing press for a demonstration.

The second day saw participants learn how to ‘graphic-design’ a calendar using Coral Draw. They worked on the AutoPrint 1510 Colt, single-colour offset machine and printed a single colour calendar they had designed. Calendar printing was carried out with polymaster plate and a sample design was printed using CtP, to highlight the pros and cons.

On the third day, the participants were taken to AutoPrint Machine Manufacturers, a leading printing machine manufacturer, to enable them to see and understand the making of machines and also to give them a flavour of the printing/ allied industry.

T.K.S. Lakshmi Priya, head of the Department of Printing Technology, said the objective of the workshop was to emphasise the importance of offset technology and to bring out the differences between products printed using offset technology and those printed with other technologies. Students from a non-printing background would be able to better relate their core discipline with printing technology when they were working after graduation, she said.

On January 28, at the same venue, Raja Rao and Maragatham released a pack of designer envelopes made by third-year students of BE Printing Technology, using the Esko Packaging software suite (ArtiosCAD and Artpro). It is a two stage process, where the package keyline is first created, onto which graphic art is created and embedded. The Keynote Speaker

The 45 participants of included students of BE Textile Technology and BE Fashion Technology from various colleges, apart from the in-house BE Printing Technology. Keynote speaker V.T. Mohan Singh, GM (Sales), Pranera Textiles, Tirupur, with his experience in printing as well as in the print media, handled sessions on basics of print media – substrates, especially textiles. The afternoon session was handled by N. Alagusundari, assistant professor


in the department. She demonstrated the dye-sublimation process by printing on fabrics and ceramic mugs.

On the second day, the participants were taken to Pranera Textiles. T. Sivabalan, the managing director, engaged the students, orienting them on each stage of the workflow process – prepress, printing and thermal transfer. The team created images with their photos and printed it on satin cloth using dye-sublimation.

The third day began with a session on Skype, on properties of substrates, print problems and their causes by V. Shyamala, senior supply coordinator, Cambridge University Press, Hyderabad.

Participants spent the day experiencing the various stages of offset print workflow. They learnt to design using Photoshop. The designs were printed and transferred to keychains, ceramic mugs and photo frames, using dye-sublimation.

Lakshmipriya said the highlight was the association with industry – Pranera Textiles in this case, a popular manufacturer of cotton, polyester and synthetic fabric.

(Inputs for article were provided by T.K.S. Lakshmipriya.)

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A hands-on session in progress.

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Participants with the offset-printed A4 calendar.

Sivabalan with workshop participants at Pranera Textiles inTirupur.

Faculty and participants pose for a picture at the end of one of the workshops.

Products printed by the students.


PAMEX 2020

Prospects look bright for growth of printing, packagingIf there’s an economic slowdown, it did not show at Pamex 2020 that was conducted at the Bombay Exhibition Centre in Mumbai January 6-9. As the curtains came down, the industry semms bullish on the growth of printing and packaging in India

Pamex 2020 show saw more than 32000 visitors, with Day 3 seeing – a record for one day – more than 10000 unique

visitors. Several deals were being reported from the venue. There were more than 375 exhibitors who presented the latest innovations and developments; more than 100 product launches, and more than 250 running machines.

Spread across two halls, 1 and 2, the inaugural function had 25 chief guests – Falit Pandya (Ahmedabad Printing Press Association), Surendra Dhote (All Bengal Printers Association), Prakash Joshi (Aurangabad Mudrak Sangh), Ashok Gupta (Bhopal Master Printers Association), Nitin Shah (Bombay Master Printers Assocation), Dalip Tuli (Greater Delhi Master Printers Association), Avadesh Awasthi (Kanpur Press Owners Association), Balasaheb Ambekar (Maharashtra Mudran

Parishad), Tushar Dhote (Mumbai Mudrak Sangh), Raveendra Joshi (Poona Press Owners Association), Sandeep Kumar Sanyal (West Bengal Master Printers Association), Ravindra Gandhi (AIPIMA), Dilip Bhise ( Screen Printer Association of India), Dibyajoyti Kalita (All India Federation of Master Printers), Neetu Arora ( Print-Packaging), Puskal Gautam (Federation of Nepal Printers Association), Delan F. Silva (Sri-Lanka Association of Printers), Sabine Geidermann (drupa), Jennifer Chen (China Academy of Printing Technology), Kamal Chopra ( All India Federation of Master Printers), Dayakar Reddy (IPAMA) and K. Rajendran (All India Federation of Master Printers).

The exhibition started in the shadows of a much talked about economic slowdown accentuating the negative sentiments shared by

Some of the special guests at the inaugural. Visitors (above and on following page) keenly watch demonstrations at stalls.


the industry worldwide facing challenges from customers moving to digital medium. Also, the exhibition was coming just a few months ahead of drupa and expectations were that customers would like to wait to see the new technologies unveiled at the world’s greatest show before making investment decisions. However, as Pamex got underway, several reports of deals being made at the grounds started surfacing even on Day 1.

Zhongke India sold its Yongshun YS KC 108 automatic speed window lamination machine to Chennai-based RS Graphics. “This will mark the machine’s first installation in India,” said Rohit Rajpal, director, Zhongke India. V.B. Sridharan, managing partner, RS Graphics, was impressed with the high-end features of dry lamination with glue that is applied to pre-cut sheets and the curing done by infrared devices.

Udaipur-based Miraj Multicolour finalised an order for the same machine while Bengaluru-based Asha Sweets Center bought an automatic rigid box-making machine. Vadodara-based Concord Printing invested in a Wenhong 1050 SF automatic die-cutting and hot-foil stamping machine and a LC-740 automatic corner cutting and line pressing window patching machine.

Ample Graphics sold its fully integrated Lishunyuan line of rigid box making machine to Bengaluru-based Tholasi Prints India. The machine features robotic arm positioning system, in-line case making system, etc. The compact high-speed Chengling Tech folder-

gluer was bought by Ruchipack from Rajasthan and the AOER fully automatic foil stamping machine on display at the exhibition was bought by Mumbai-based Award Offset Printers & Packaging.

Ample was also showcasing Tiancen’s latest high-speed lamination machine, KFM106MC at the exhibition and bagged an order from three companies including Manohar Filament from Sonipat, Azure Press from Bahadurgarh and Dimple Packaging of Ludhiana.

Canon India sold its imagePress C8000 to Mumbai-based Commercial Art Engravers. The press is equipped with Fiery B4100 software for VDP personalisation and it is designed for VDP, photo, barcode and QR code. Delhi-based Advantage Offset booked a Komori Lithrone G437. The machine can run at the maximum speed up to 15000 sph with online coater. Polykam Offset booked a five-colour Komori GL 537 plus online coater printing press.

NBG Printographic Machinery sold its rigid box making machine to Hyderabad-based Kala Jyoti. The new machine is designed for producing boxes for mobile phones, gifts, cosmetics, etc.

Baroda-based Packaging Ind invested in an iEcho high-speed digital cutting system from Emerging Graphics.

Mumbai-based print finishing equipment specialist Hitech sold more than 50 machines worth over Rs 2.3 crore. The key highlight among the range of flagship products the


company was showing at the expo was its widely popular iEcho PK 0640 and PK 0604 Plus automatic intelligent cutting system.

Akshat Pardiwala, CEO, Nippon Color, confirmed selling at least six CtP Machines and was expecting to sell more before the exhibition closed. Prem Vishwakarma, director, Robus India, reported selling two die-cutting machines and three folder-gluer machines at the exhibition. “We booked eight machines including the Rhino Dexa Twin Deck Coater for orders totalling around Rs. 5 Crore. We got orders from Algeria and Nepal,” said Kapil Dev, GM, Alpana Visual Packaging Aids.

Megabound, the Bangalore-based case-making and book-binding machine supplier sold more than 70 machines. Mumbai-based Acme Machinery Company bagged five orders for their machines. To strengthen their new venture into the packaging domain, Bengaluru-based Kandalaa Prints invested in a Bobst Ambition A1 and Novacut 106 3.0 die-cutter. The company sealed the deal with Bobst at Pamex. “We sold all the machines that we displayed at

the exhibition and have several enquiries that should convert to orders soon,” shared Amit Sheth from Intergraphic Sales and Services. DGM India received eight orders for its foil stamping machines, die-cutters and folder-gluers. Machines demonstrated by the company at the expo consisted of SmartFold 1100 folder-gluer and others. The machine is designed to produce around one lakh boxes per hour.

Vijaya Grafiks bagged two orders for its Vijaya Veenine 65 carton folder gluer from JP Print N Pack (Sahibabad) and Shri Balaji Industries (Parwanoo). The machine has a speed of 300 m/ min with optional features such as third bottom track and top track final folding unit, plasma curing system, etc.

New Delhi-based photo-album specialist Citi Digital Press signed a deal with Monotech for replacing their existing four-year-old Scodix S75 with the advanced Scodix Ultra Pro with Foil.

Prakash Offset Machinery demonstrates its fully automated PBM 2BM PC1117 box making machine. A Pune-based packaging company booked the machine during the expo.

SPB Machinery sold its PTF-130 cake tray folding machine to Lucknow-based Shree Shyam Packaging. Five Star Machinery reported sale of five of its machines.

(This article is based on a Pamex release.)

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There was a steady stream of visitors to the stalls and the buzz could not be missed.

Guests and visitors at the evening programme.


Printers meet to discuss state of industry and its futureFor the very first time, All India Federation of Master Printers hosted the World Print & Communication Forum Conference and board meeting on the sidelines of Pamex 2020

The World Print & Communication Forum Conference (WPCF) was held at the ballroom of Westin Garden City, Mumbai

on January 8. The theme was: Redefining Printing – A Discussion with World Leaders. There were speakers from USA, Belgium, South Africa, Japan, China and India. The one-day event saw more than 150 delegates from across the world attending.

The conference was divided into two technical sessions, both moderated by Prof Rajendrakumar Anayath, vice chancellor, Deenbandhu Cho Ram University of Science and Technology.

The inaugural session was conducted by Prof Kamal Chopra, chairman Pamex. He was joined by Raveendra Joshi, chairman of the organising committee, WPCF; Dibyajoyti Kalita, president, All India Federation of Master printers (AIFMP) and Prof Anayath.

Narendra Paruchuri, chief managing director, Pragati Offset, conducting the first technical session, spoke about the journey of printing through the years and the scope of printing in the future. He emphasised the need for printers to unite and collaborate, to grow. He also urged them to go green and use bio-degradable materials in the printing and packaging industry.

Sukhdev Singh of Colgate Palmolive made a presentation titled, ‘Get print-ready to deliver branded packaging in India’. He spoke about the tremendous growth in the printed packaging sector and how there was the need for printers to provide complete branding solutions.

Kaz Arai, GM-Public Relations, Japan Federation of Printing Industries, spoke about the state of the printing industry in Japan, about the importance of moving towards smart factories, and how automation was essential to increase the efficiency of presses. Arai later spoke about ‘Current trends in the Japanese printing industry and the direction it needs to move in the future’.

Abdool Mahjed Mahmood, CEO, Printing SA, spoke about the challenges the printing industry was facing in South Africa. Chang Xiaoxia, VP, The Printing Technology Association of China & GM, Beijing Keyin Media & Culture Co, presented ‘The present situation and transformation trend of the printing industry in China’. She presented an in-depth scenario of the Chinese market, the trends and opportunities.

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Narendra Paruchuri (right), chief managing director, Pragati Offset, being presented a memento.


Industry updates

The second technical session began with a presentation from Beatrice Klose, secretary general, Intergraf. She spoke about trends in

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the European market and the challenges they were facing due to the legislation passed by EU. She noted how package printing had overtaken graphic printing in Europe and how the future lay in packaging. She also spoke about the lack of skilled professionals in the printing industry.

Prof Anayath made a presentation on behalf of Marcus Heering, MD, The German Association of Printing and Paper. The topic: ‘Status quo and the upcoming trends for the printing industry’. He spoke on four major trends in Europe – Artificial Intelligence, Connected Customer, Platform Economy and Circular Economy.

Ashutosh Tripathy, R&D Group, Natural Centre for Flexible Electronics, IIT Kanpur, made an interesting presentation on ‘Printed electronics – challenges and opportunities for India’. He highlighted the opportunities in flexible electronics for the print industry.

Michael Makin, president & CEO, Printing Industries of America, spoke about the state of the industry in the US and the challenges they were facing. He provided an update on the macro-economic condition of the industry.

Ideas being exchanged during a break.

This youngster is thrilled to be on stage to receive an award.

A panel discussion about to commence.


Industry updates

QIPC continues good run in India

QI Press Controls (QIPC), the Dutch specialist in measurement and control equipment for the print industry, continues to do well in India. Recently, the company again received three orders for the replacement of automation systems

– orders coming from Hindustan Times Media, Mirror Image and Delhi Press Patra Prakashan.

At Hindustan Times Media, a large Indian media group known for large print volumes, maintaining top quality with innovative products, two mRC-3D cameras for colour register and cut-off control were installed recently on a Harris N400B press at their Greater Noida Plant. The mRC-3D system replaced an older and non-functioning automation register- and cutoff control system from another manufacturer. Says Rakesh Dave, managing director of QIPC-EAE India: “Hindustan Times approached us for a system that could deliver consistent, high quality performance to keep waste to a minimum. We could deliver that.”

Also, in Delhi, two new mRC-3D cameras for colour register and cut-off control were installed on a Harris N400B press. Again, the mRC-3D system replaced an obsolete system from another

manufacturer. Delhi Press Patra Prakashan publishes 33 magazines in 10 languages, and has a group readership of over 35 million. Some of its popular publications include The Caravan, Champak, Grihshobha, Saras Salil, and Sarita. “We’ve been in contact with them for a number of years, but now it was time they really needed a new automation system. Thanks to our good reputation in the industry and our long-standing relationship with each other, they have chosen us as their new partner in business,” says Dave.

Mirror Image in Gandhinagar chose to upgrade its press automation with an mRC-3D system from QIPC. Two cameras on the Harris M110 press automate colour register and cut-off control.

“ The automation they had on their press, which is from another manufacturer, is no longer working properly. When opting for a replacement system, we were at the top of their list,” Dave says.

QIPC develops and delivers innovative, high quality optical measure and control systems. The company is globally active in the newspaper and magazine printing industry. Their total solutions are supported by a worldwide service network.

Reiff Zeitungsdruck sees QIPC as ‘safer choice’

QIPC will equip the Koenig & Bauer (K&B) Commander press of Reiff Zeitungsdruck with new automation. The German regional printing company sees the Dutch specialist in measuring and control equipment for the printing industry as a safe choice for the future.

In Offenbach, central Germany, QIPC’s mRC-3D system for register and cut-off control from QIPC will replace an automation system from a local manufacturer. That system is outdated and no longer supported. “It was therefore essential for us to replace that old system,” says Ewald Hauser, managing director of Reiff Zeitungsdruck. “The choice of working with that local automation manufacturer was logical at the time,” explains Marcel Wollgramm, head of Sales at QIPC’s sister company Engineering Automation Electronics

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The mRC-3D camera with AIMS.


Industry Updates

(EAE). “But now they were ready for a partner that really focuses on the print industry. A safer choice.”“The name of QIPC is widely known in

newspaper print industry,” Hauser continues. “QIPC is known to operate stable and reliable. We visited several other printing companies that work with QIPC automation and they were all satisfied with this system.”

Furthermore, the fact that QIPC is the preferred supplier of press manufacturer K&B played an important role in Reiff Zeitungsdruck’s decision. Marcel Wollgramm: “Both for new and existing K&B presses: printers know that we work very closely with K&B. We are therefore always consulted when new automation is being considered on a K&B press”.

The 12 new mRC-3D cameras for register and cut-off control will be installed on the K&B Commander press and will help the print facility save start-up waste and work more efficiently. For all service- and maintenance-related matters, the printing company can rely on one single contact person. “We expect that the QIPC system will work fast

and reliable under all circumstances and for all types of paper”, concludes Ewald Hauser. “We want to keep waste as low as possible and count on this investment to make that possible.”

Mainpost convinced by QIPC automation

industry will be installed in Würzburg, in central Germany.

The new order from Germany comes shortly after Mainpost’s printing works first became acquainted with QIPC’s press automation and is part of a general modernisation of the K&B Commander CT press. “The press expansion that Mainpost recently purchased included QIPC register and colour control,” says QIPC’s Area Sales Manager Harold Drinhuyzen. “When they experienced what that automation did for them on that extension, they were immediately convinced that they also needed QIPC press automation on the remaining part of their press.” Says Andreas Kunzemann, technical manager at Mainpost: “The convincing results and experiences on our first production line, made us decide relatively quick to retrofit the rest of the machine as well.”

The mRC-3D system for colour register and cut-off register and the IDS-3D system for colour density control that will be installed on the K&B Commander CT press prepare the printing company for the future. The printing company regularly works on behalf of third parties. “The demand for consistent, high quality printing is increasing,” says Andreas Kunzemann. “In addition, we like to limit the number of waste copies as much as possible. That’s why we needed to invest in new press automation”.

In addition to Mainpost, the Schweinfurter Tagblatt, Schweinfurter Volkszeitung, Hassfurter Tagblatt, Bote vom Hassgau and the Volksblatt are printed in Würzburg. They will all be able to count on an increased quality of their productions. During the printing process, the company, which employs around a thousand people, can also count on increased process stability.

A total of eight mRC-3D and 4 IDS-3D cameras will be installed in Würzburg. Andreas Kunzemann is very confident about the new press automation: “Also because we have talked to many other printers who were positive about QIPC’s systems.” And he is not only satisfied on a technical level, also when it comes to service and support: “Because the system is completely new to us, we still need some guidance from QIPC.”

Andreas Kunzemann, technical manager at Mainpost.

The printing company of the German newspaper, Mainpost, is expanding its press automation with the systems of QIPC in response to earlier convincing results. The mRC-3D and IDS-3D systems of the Dutch specialist in measurement and control equipment for the printing


Industry Updates

Rapida 105 Pro boost for Croatian company

Tiskara Zelina began to modernise its entire production set-up in 2018. Important boosts in terms of quality and productivity can be attributed to a Rapida 105 PRO from Koenig & Bauer.

When Croatia joined the European Union in 2013, it heralded a new wave of economic development in the country, which has in turn contributed to sustainable growth. The national print industry has also benefitted, and has invested massively in the optimisation of its production processes over the past couple of years.

This has been especially true for commercial printing company Tiskara Zelina. The centrepiece of an ambitious investment package is a new Rapida 105 PRO from Koenig & Bauer, with which the company has significantly improved its position on the Croatian market.

Following the commissioning of the Rapida 105 PRO, the 90 employees at Tiskara Zelina already achieved an increase in turnover of between 20 and 30 per cent in 2019 alone. “We are now planning to maintain this growth in the coming years,” says Managing Director Tanja Hasan Lemić. “Perhaps not on the same scale as 2019, but we will certainly be continuing along the same path.”

The company has identified especially promising opportunities in its export business – the current export share of 10 per cent is to be increased successively in the future. The product portfolio

ranges from hard-cover and paperback books to calendars, brochures, catalogues and posters. Thanks to its in-house finishing department, Tiskara Zelina is able to react flexibly to market demands and can even take on last-minute jobs.

As a longstanding customer of Koenig & Bauer, the company was well aware of the benefits to be derived from the technical further development of the Rapida series and, here, specifically of the Rapida 105 PRO. The configuration chosen was a four-colour press with inline coater, and the managing director points not least to the excellent price-performance ratio of the latest press generation. “The Rapida 105 PRO has catapulted us into a

different league.” This is immediately clear from a comparison of makeready times with a slowly ageing four-colour Rapida 105 perfector dating from 2008. “On the Rapida 105 PRO, the first saleable sheet comes off the press between 25 and 50 per cent faster, irrespective of the format.”

The fully automatic FAPC plate changing system, with which all four plates are changed in no more than two minutes, is a decisive factor in this respect. Paper travel settings from the feeder to the delivery are also implemented fully automatically parallel to plate changing. Thanks to the preset capabilities of the feeder, the relevant parameters for sheet format and the air controls can be taken directly from the console – something which greatly simplifies the processing of its broad substrate spectrum for Tiskara Zelina.

Optimised inking units are one of the keys to the outstanding print quality achieved by the Rapida 105 PRO. Further time is saved in daily practice through the possibility for simultaneous washing of the blankets and impression cylinders between jobs. “Our printers appreciate not only the high level of automation on the Rapida 105 PRO, but also the modules serving quality control,” says Tajana Hasan Lemić.

The Rapida 105 PRO installed at Tiskara Zelina incorporates an additional anilox coating tower to accelerate the drying process and to bring the printed sheets into corresponding shape for further processing immediately after printing. The coater

The managing director of Tiskara Zelina, Tajana Hasan Lemić (centre), with the printers on the Rapida 105 Pro.


Industry Updates

also supports the general trend towards increased product refinement, an aspect to which Tanja Hasan Lemić will be paying special attention in the future as a means to expand into new market segments.

The press is controlled and monitored centrally from the ErgoTronic console. A wallscreen presents all press settings to the operator in a clear overview, and a live image mode even enables evaluation of the current inking results via the QualiTronic ColorControl module. “We are convinced that the Rapida 105 PRO from Koenig & Bauer is the ideal press for us, both technically and from the perspective of maintenance.” A regional service team guarantees fast reaction times and gives the company the necessary peace of mind.

New Commander CL for Druckhaus Delmenhorst

The floor-mounted Commander CL comprises three four-high towers, two KF 5 jaw folders and three Pastomat reelstands with a stripping station and Patras A paper-reel transport system. It is scheduled to come on stream in the fourth quarter of 2020. “Our existing Commander CT is already very

well utilised, and so we needed to expand our production capacities ready for a series of new jobs which we will be printing from December 2020 onwards. Given our longstanding partnership

and cooperation with Koenig & Bauer over the past decades, it was soon clear that we would once again be choosing a press from Würzburg,” says Gerhard Tapken, the owner of Druckhaus Delmenhorst.

Engineered for a maximum web width of 1400 mm and a cylinder circumference of 1,000 mm, the new Commander CL can print up to 100000 four-colour newspapers per hour. Like the existing Commander CT, it incorporates a whole host of automation features. RollerTronic roller locks, inking unit and cylinder washing, fan-out control, colour measuring and control systems, colour and cut-off register controls and fully automatic plate changes combine to simplify operation and reduce job makeready times, waste and maintenance requirements to a minimum. The Commander CL is controlled by means of an ErgoTronic console with EasyTronic for optimised press start-up.

Starting at the end of the year to come, the new press will be responsible for production of the newspapers, Weser-Kurier, Bremer Nachrichten and Verdener Nachrichten, among others. Says Günter Noll, head of sales at Koenig & Bauer Digital & Webfed: “We at Koenig & Bauer are delighted that Druckhaus Delmenhorst has followed up the installation of its CT 6/2 in 2013 with a renewed expression of confidence in our products. With a total of four state-of-the-art folder deliveries, Delmenhorst will then become one of the major newspaper printing locations in northern Germany.”

Since its initial market launch just a few years ago, Koenig & Bauer has now sold 28 presses of this type to clients in Germany, France, China and the USA, and it is currently the most frequently ordered newspaper press.

Established as DruckHaus Rieck in 1822, the company was bought out by managing director Gerhard Tapken in 2018 and renamed Druckhaus Delmenhorst. With prudent investments and innovative ideas, Gerhard Tapken has since guided the company out of its financial difficulties and returned it to a solid footing. “Many people thought I was crazy at the time. But when I look back now, I can definitely say that it was the right decision.”

Shortly after signing the contract: Gerhard Tapken (left), owner of Druckhaus Delmenhorst, and Günter Noll, sales manager Koenig & Bauer Digital & Webfed.


Industry Updates

Aside from the aforementioned new jobs, the company is already kept busy printing numerous supplements and weekly titles as contract production, amounting to several million copies every week.

Fujifilm opens new office in Bengaluru

Fujifilm India, global pioneer in imaging technologies, has announced the opening of its new office in Bengaluru. The new set-up will help the company further expand its presence in South India, better serve its existing customers, and also provide an exciting and fun working environment to its workforce.

The new office, located on Infantry Road, comes equipped with best-in-class amenities and service capabilities. Multi-colored workstations

along with Wi-Fi meeting rooms with HDCOM facility and collapsible training rooms. It will also offer endoscopy and DSC camera service centers to serve its ever-increasing customer base in the region. With this Fuji will able to provide better customer service to its customers in the Bengaluru region.

With the new workplace, Fujifilm plans to increase workforce by 30 per cent in the city across functions such as Electronic Imaging Division, Instax, Industrial Products and Medical Systems. The Bengaluru team will work closely with the Gurugram head office and other offices in India and around the world to drive value from collaborative innovation.

Speaking at the opening of the new Bengaluru office, Haruto Iwata, managing director, Fujifilm India, said, “India is the most important market for us in the Asia-Pacific Region, and we see huge potential in the country from a market, innovation, and talent point. Our new office is reflection of our commitment and trust in the promise that the country holds. Our vision has always been to provide an open, fair and clear workplace culture that allows individuals to ascertain their objectives sincerely, make rational decisions, and continuously take on challenges with courage. With this new set-up, we are offering a collaborative and efficient workspace that reflect our style of business, boost productivity and helping themselves and firm grow.”

Said Navneet Kumar Ahluwalia, head - Human Resources & Administration, Fujifilm India: “At Fujifilm India, we ensure that we are equally committed towards our customers and workforce.

The new Commander CL will start production at Druckhaus Delmenhorst in the fourth quarter of 2020.

L-r: Tribhuwan Joshi, lead PR, Corporate Branding and CSR; Navneet Ahluwalia, head - Human Resource and Administration; Haruto Iwata – MD; Sanjeev Kohli, senior manager, Administration; Solomon Sukumar, GM; and Yusuke Yamaguchi, assistant to MD.


Industry Updates

The new space in Bengaluru is an ergonomically designed workspace, with open and collaborative work environment, and a capacity for different teams to work together, driving synergies and contributing to business outcomes. We are focused on offering a dynamic workplace with immense growth potential to all our employees.”

Sharing his views on the new office, Sanjeev Kohli, project coordinator and senior manager, Admin, Fujifilm India, said: “The setup of the new office was completed in around 70 days. We have designed this new office keeping in mind the vibrant colours that influence an employee’s mood and the entire office environment. With the Endoscopy and Camera Service center established in our Bengaluru office we want to provide full support to our customers in and around the city.”

Fujifilm India is currently serving its customers across the country with five offices located in Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Bengaluru, and with its head office in Gurugram. The energetic, contemporary and distinctive culture of the new office reflects Fujifilm’s vision and efforts of empowering the local management to bring the best of products and services for our consumers and focus on India as well as new growth area.

For more than three decades, the company has been a leading technology partner for some of the world’s biggest news and media companies, including The New York Times, American media group Gannett, Axel Springer in Germany, The Times of India, and The Economist.

In the current fiscal year (end April 30, 2020), Stibo DX expects a growth in revenue of about 25 per cent. The growth is driven by the company’s CUE publishing platform which is gaining market shares at a rapid pace.

Among the most recent names on the list of CUE installations are TVN, the leading private TV broadcaster in Poland; Le Groupe Sud Ouest, one of France’s biggest regional news publishers; as well as five of the largest media companies in Germany: Handelsblatt Media Group, Der Tagesspiegel, BNN, NOZ, and Verlagsgruppe Ippen. All have chosen CUE as their platform for driving digital transformation.

As Stibo DX, the software vendor prepares to make CUE the media industry’s

publishing platform of choice and expand into new markets. The name change to Stibo DX highlights the company’s relation to the Stibo Group, a foundation-owned corporate group, founded in 1794 and headquartered in Aarhus, Denmark.“Our family relation to Stibo is becoming

increasingly important for us. Our customers,and the market in general, appreciate the financial

stability guaranteed by the StiboGroup. It gives us the advantage of keeping a

long-term focus on innovation, customerrelations, and on our business in general,” says

Dan Korsgaard, CEO of Stibo DX.Over the years, Stibo DX has made significant

investments in technology and innovation. The CUE publishing platform is the latest result of these investments. As part of the rebranding process, Stibo DX will be merging with its subsidiary company, Escenic. Stibo DX’s other subsidiary, Digital Collections, acquired in April 2019, will remain an independent brand.

The new name underlines the core offering of Stibo DX. DX is short for digital experiences, digital

CCI becomes Stibo DX, increases growth

Dan Korsgaard, CEO of Stibo DX.

CCI, the company behind the CUE publishing platform, is a market leader in editorial content management systems. Beginning February 1 this year, the company will change its name to Stibo DX. With the new company brand, the software vendor takes a step closer to its parent company, Stibo Group, and gears up for further growth.

transformation, and digital excellence. “Stibo DX is a new name, but our people are the same skilled professionals who help our customers worldwide create premium content and engaging digital experiences. We will continue to build on our expertise within the media industry while sharing our know-how with companies in other industries. All content creators and publishers will find a stable and innovative partner in Stibo DX,” says Korsgaard.

Stibo DX develops content creation and publishing platforms for media and brand publishers all over the world. The company helps customers create engaging content, reach new audiences, and run profitable businesses. Stibo DX has offices in Aarhus, Denmark; Atlanta, USA; Hamburg, Germany; Oslo, Norway; and Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Koenig & Bauer Coding appoints DKSH for Asia

DKSH Business Unit Technology, the leading market expansion services provider for technology companies seeking to grow their business in Asia, has been appointed by Koenig & Bauer Coding to bring their leading coding and making devices to Asia Pacific. The two companies will partner in five markets, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Vietnam.

Koenig & Bauer Coding stands for innovative, forward-thinking products and technologies, which are developed and manufactured according to the highest quality standards. Its coding solutions can be found in all application fields and are adopted by many global leaders in the food and beverage, consumer products, packaging, cables and pipes, automotive and electronics, pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries. The company has been certified to DIN EN ISO 9001:2000.

Under the agreement, DKSH will provide sales, marketing and after-sales services for Koenig & Bauer Coding leading coding systems including continuous inkjet, DOD-inkjet, thermal transfer, hot foil, offline feeding systems and software.

Sandra Wagner, VP, Sales & Marketing at Koenig & Bauer Coding states: “We are proud


Industry Updates

to partner with DKSH in these markets that are important for our continuous growth. Our customers are our top priority and we strive to exceed our customers’ expectations. That’s why DKSH will be the best partner as we trust that they will put our customers’ requirements as priority and collaborate with us closely to help our customers achieve their business success.”

Hanno Elbraechter, head, Business Unit Technology, DKSH says: “We are very pleased to exclusively partner with Koenig & Bauer Coding. Their innovative systems complete our product portfolio and enable us to offer more innovative solutions to our large customer base in the markets. We will help Koenig & Bauer Coding achieve growth through our dedicated specialists, profound market expertise and systematic market development approach. We look forward to a long and successful partnership with Koenig & Bauer Coding.

Koenig & Bauer signals commitment to society

At the beginning of 2020, the Koenig & Bauer Sheetfed business unit in Radebeul joined a growing number of globally active companies and organisations from the region in the association, Businesses for a Cosmopolitan Saxony. As a member of this association, the company will be supporting a range of concrete measures aimed at promoting the integration of refugees and migrants in local business and industry.

Already in the past, Koenig & Bauer has placed its weight behind efforts to promote democracy and tolerance and to assist the integration of refugees. In 2015, for example, two young refugees from Pakistan, who had been forced to flee their home country for political and religious reasons, were accepted into vocational training at the company and began an apprenticeship as mechatronics technicians. After passing the final examinations set by the Dresden Chamber of Industry and Commerce last year, they were subsequently offered permanent contracts to work in the press assembly centre.

In the meantime, a 32-year-old engineer from Syria has also taken up employment at Koenig & Bauer Sheetfed, initially on a time-limited basis. He used to live on the outskirts of Damascus and came to Germany at the beginning of 2016. Since August 2018, he has been working as a draughtsman in the design group responsible for large-format sheetfed offset presses.

Staff from Koenig & Bauer travel regularly to countries all over the world, whether for sales negotiations, press installations or service assignments, or to participate at international trade fairs and similar events. At the same time, customers and partners from the most diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds are frequent visitors to Radebeul. They come to obtain the latest information at first hand, to finalise agreements or to complete the factory acceptance of a purchased press, for example.

Smiling faces after the signing ceremony.

A mechanical engineer from Syria is well integrated into the design department at Koenig & Bauer Sheetfed.


Industry Updates

Ralf Sammeck, CEO of Koenig & Bauer Sheetfed, emphasises the special relationship: “We live an open-minded and cosmopolitan approach and are delighted at every opportunity to share our mindset and experience with others.”

This sometimes also happens very publicly. At a number of home games of the local football club Dynamo Dresden last season, Koenig & Bauer used the touchline advertising boards to champion an open-minded and tolerant society. Sammeck hopes that his call will be heeded not only by his employees, but indeed by all Saxons:

“Challenge xenophobia and populism wherever they rear their head. Join the cause to preserve our democratic values.”-

Nazdar to stick to ink innovation at label summit

Nazdar Ink Technologies will present its diverse range of inks developed for narrow-web printing applications on booth #40 at Latin America Label Summit 2020. The event takes place at Espacio Riesco, Santiago, Chile, between 10 and 11 March.

As a prominent supplier to the flexible packaging, folding carton and label markets, Nazdar will be displaying a variety of inks ideal for narrow-web printers. Nazdar’s experts with years of experience will be on hand to explain the technologies and

benefits behind its UV and LED flexo, UV offset and UV letterpress inks, durable UV coatings, water-based flexo, UV and LED rotary screen inks, and UV and LED overprint varnishes and adhesives.

Nazdar has nearly a century of ink development expertise and experience working with key equipment manufacturers, enabling the Shawnee, KS-based company to offer the highest quality products at affordable prices. In addition to narrow-web applications, Nazdar also manufactures screen printing and digital inkjet inks and coatings for specialty graphic applications.

Label Summit Latin America, from the Labelexpo stable, is the leading label and package printing event in the region and features top speakers and industry suppliers from around the world. Through a series of expert-led conference sessions, the event enables visitors to learn about label and packaging trends and technologies and hear case studies from printers, brand owners and designers, while meeting and networking with the world’s leading suppliers and experts.“Latin America Label Summit is a great

opportunity for businesses in the label and packaging markets - and those considering moving into them - to meet the Nazdar team and discover why our inks and coatings are used worldwide,” says Mike Harjung, Nazdar VP, Narrow Web Products.

New Color-Logic website is brand-friendly

Graphic designers often have difficulty explaining the intricacies of metallic printing and reflective substrates to brand managers and agency personnel. To assist them, the Color-Logic website has been revised to make using mobile devices easier. The new site is loaded with video landing pages showing movies of printed samples produced by Color-Logic licensed printers and technology partners around the world. In addition, annotated examples enable viewers to compare the metallic designs produced using offset, digital,

The two skilled workers Bilal Ahmad (2nd from left) and Saad Malik (middle) proudly show off their training certificates. Last year they received their permanent employment contracts from the hands of Ralf Sammeck, board member of Koenig & Bauer and CEO of Koenig & Bauer Sheetfed, training man-ager Jochen Mann (2nd from right) and HR manager Markus Rasche (right).


Industry Updates

inkjet, latex, flexographic, cold foil, gravure, and screen printing.

Discussing the new Color-Logic website -- www.color-logic.com -- Color-Logic co-founder Mark Geeves said: “Graphic designers can see visuals created in just seconds or with one or two mouse clicks using the Color-Logic Design Suite for Adobe. In virtually every case, hours -- and often days -- of conventional design time would be required to achieve the same effects without Color-Logic. In addition, Color-Logic eliminates the trial and error necessary when using only Adobe tools. The Color-Logic focus is not to inhibit creativity, but to provide creatives with the tools yielding a predictable and reproducible outcome when adding metallic colors and embellishments to designs. In addition to hundreds of videos, visitors to the new Color-Logic website will find a listing of licensed Color-Logic printers worldwide--including the printing process they use.”

Color-Logic develops colour communication systems and software tool sets for a variety of special effect printing applications. The company provides brand owners, product managers, corporations, and their advertising agencies the ability to differentiate themselves and their clients with a simple print production process that yields dramatic results.

Color-Logic expands Pattern-FX Library

The Color-Logic library of Pattern-FX embellishments has been expanded to 80 different designs, all of which are readily available to Color-Logic designers and licensed Color-Logic printers. Commenting on the expanded library, Color-Logic Director of Sales and Marketing Mark Geeves said: “Preparing complex, recurring patterns has traditionally required many hours of effort by graphic designers, but the Pattern-FX feature in the Color-Logic software suite makes the job effortless and trial-and-error free. Using Color-Logic Pattern-FX, even relatively unskilled designers and prepress operators can confidently

execute complex designs and offer print customers an astounding array of pattern choices.” “Color-Logic Pattern-FX can be used to create

micro-emboss plates or intricate varnish layers, and can be combined to create print that truly outshines competition. All Color-Logic patterns come predefined as Metallic, Dimensional-FX, Watermark-FX, Watermark-FX Plus, Emboss, and Varnish. The ongoing focus at Color-Logic is to help the graphic designer make the most of the presses at licensed Color-Logic printers, minimizing waste and producing embellishments and metallic colors previously unseen. Color-Logic Pattern-FX provide predictable and reproducible results for print embellishment when working with licensed Color-Logic printers around the world.”

Drytac adds extra opacity to window graphics

Drytac has announced the global availability of its SpotOn White M50 window graphic media for vibrant, eye-catching displays, which offers 50 per

Color-Logic Pattern-FX designs.

The effect of Drytac SpotOn White M50.


Industry Updates

cent more opacity than standard SpotOn White products.

Drytac SpotOn White M50 is an ink-receptive printable vinyl with compatibility with UV, latex, solvent and eco-solvent printing technologies. It is available in roll widths of up to 1,370mm (54”) and offers interior durability of up to three years and outdoor of up to six months.

The light-blocking properties of SpotOn White M50 make this matte media ideal for window applications in retail, medical or office environments - as well as for wall graphics, trade show displays, indoor signage or retail promotions where show-through would otherwise affect the design.

In particular, this 100μ (4 mil) monomeric PVC film is perfect for short-term applications thanks to Drytac’s innovative adhesive technology: a unique dot pattern adhesive that is virtually undetectable but enables incredibly easy and bubble-free installation, reliability while in place, and clean removal within twelve months.

Says Shaun Holdom, global product manager for Drytac: “SpotOn White M50 is the perfect choice for retailers who want vibrantly coloured window graphics that can be changed quickly, easily and frequently, thanks to the combination of 50 per cent greater opacity and Drytac’s unique adhesive. The fact that this product is also suitable for wall graphics, internal signage and more also makes SpotOn White M50 a great all-rounder for a range of customers who can install it with minimal effort.”

Color-Logic certifies Sooner Than Later

Color-Logic has certified Sooner Than Later, a digital printing, data processing, and mailing operation in Dublin, Ireland. Speaking about the certification, Color-Logic Co-founder and Director of Sales and Marketing Mark Geeves said: “Sooner Than Later is the first Irish printer to take advantage of the Color-Logic/Xerox Iridesse combination to offer their customers special

effects and metallic printing unlike that available elsewhere. With Color-Logic and their Xerox Iridesse press, Sooner Than Later can effortlessly produce striking mail pieces.”

Sooner Than Later is owned and managed by two brothers, Andrew and Mark Finney, and employs 25 people in an around-the-clock operation producing high quality digital print and mailing solutions for an impressive array of clients. In addition to a new Xerox Iridesse press, Sooner Than Later operates a Xerox iGen and specialises in variable data printing. With the addition of Color-Logic software, the company can now produce variable data metallic special effects, further customizing their personalization offerings.

Drytac ReTac appears at The Mirage, Las Vegas

A new restaurant at The Mirage Hotel and Casino Complex in Las Vegas is to open soon, featuring dramatic wall murals printed on Drytac ReTac Textures. Opened in 1989, the 3044-room Mirage is a staple of the Las Vegas Strip, featured in dozens of movies including 2001’s Ocean’s Eleven. Its latest attraction is Diablo’s Cantina restaurant, newly open, which is decorated in

Sooner Than Later staff with the Xerox Iridesse and Color-Logic certification print.


Industry Updates

vibrant wall murals with a Mexican-inspired fiery skeleton design.

Las Vegas grand format print and installation company Screaming Images printed and fitted the murals, drawing on 18 years’ experience working on projects from the worlds of sport, retail and entertainment. It counts MGM, the Raiders, NFL, NBA, Kawasaki and Shoe Palace amongst its customers.

To achieve the depth and visual appeal required for the incredible Diablo’s wall coverings, Screaming Images chose Drytac ReTac Textures in Canvas, a matte white phthalate-free polymeric PVC film with an embossed textured finish. In addition to Canvas, ReTac Textures is available in Sand, Linen and Woodgrain, all offering a textured finish that gives an extra visual and touchable element to high-quality artwork.

ReTac Textures is available in a thickness of 150μ (6 mil) and roll widths of up to 1370mm (54”). It is compatible with solvent, eco-solvent, UV and latex printing technologies and can also be used for exterior graphics projects.

ReTac Textures’ polymeric self-adhesive vinyl features an ultra-removable adhesive backing that can be easily and repeatedly removed and repositioned with no damage to the surface underneath. With up to five years’ durability in indoor environments, ReTac Textures is also an ideal choice for long-term graphics projects, such as at The Mirage.

James Swanson, principal and owner, Screaming Images, says Diablo’s was a ‘super cool’ project to work on. “We chose ReTac Textures because of its compatibility with a long-term display in a high-end restaurant.”

Drytac SpotOn used on Emmerdale bus

The Leeds Pride parade featured an open-top double-decker bus wrapped for the occasion by the team behind Emmerdale’s on-screen graphics, using Drytac easily removable graphics materials.

The Scenic Design Department within the Yorkshire-based soap, part of ITV Studios, installed a new Roland TrueVIS VG2 printer/cutter in summer 2019. The device was bought from Sabur Inks, who also supplied a quantity of Drytac SpotOn for use with the new system. The 4 mil (100μ) high-quality, ink receptive printable vinyl is enhanced with Drytac’s innovative ‘dot pattern’ adhesive that enables simple, bubble-free application and, crucially, easy and clean removal.

These features are ideally suited to the work done by the Emmerdale in-house graphics team, who work with both the art and production directors to design and produce all printed work that is seen on-screen, including sets, retail signage, advertising posters, vehicle graphics, menus and paperwork handled by the actors, and beer pumps in The Woolpack pub.

A new restaurant at The Mirage hotel and casino complex in Las Vegas is to open soon, featuring dramatic wall murals printed on Drytac ReTac Textures.

Emmerdale’s on-screen graphics used on Emmerdale bus.


Industry Updates

Ian Sykes, Graphic Artist at ITV Studios, explains that he visited Sign and Digital UK in April 2019 to see samples of suitable products. “Our graphics may only be in place for a day – a week at most

– and are often applied over existing signage or vehicle graphics that must remain intact after ours are removed,” he explains. “We went to Sign UK in search of a low-tac and removable product, and several people recommended Drytac SpotOn. When we bought the new Roland printer it was an opportunity to try it out.”

The ITV team’s first project using SpotOn was not an on-screen display but the Emmerdale-sponsored Pride bus, which took to the streets of Leeds on August 4th 2019 in temperatures up to 28ºC. As this was a sightseeing bus hired for the event, its existing graphics had to remain undamaged after the temporary graphics – the LGBT+ rainbow flag with the Emmerdale and ITV logos – were removed afterwards.“We used 3m x 1,300mm sheets of Drytac SpotOn

to cover virtually the entire bus with graphics,” says Ian Sykes. “The best thing was the SpotOn product left the existing graphics underneath intact.”

Drytac to educate, inspire with new video series

Drytac has released a series of videos giving an insight into how it utilises its unique adhesive science to develop market-leading print media, protective films and bonding tapes - and how

graphics professionals can use them to achieve outstanding results.

A new short film introduces Drytac and its history spanning over four decades, giving a glimpse at how Drytac’s manufacturing facilities in the UK and North America develop products used across numerous industries. The behind-the-scenes video, narrated by Drytac CEO Hayden Kelley, also looks at how the brand considers the full life cycle of its products from the start of each application to the end.

Alongside the introductory film is a series of application highlight videos that show how Drytac’s self-adhesive graphics products can be used to achieve exceptional results. As a leading international manufacturer of self-adhesive materials for the large format print and signage markets, Drytac has decades of experience in the successful installation of graphics applications. Each highlight video, all under 30 seconds long, informs and inspires viewers to complete their own stunning projects.

An additional film focuses on the Drytac Academy in Bristol, which provides an extensive curriculum of training courses for display graphics professionals. The Academy is packed with the most popular wide-format printing technology from the industry’s biggest brands, to offer a comprehensive educational space reflecting real-world workflows.

All of the videos are available on Drytac’s YouTube channel. “We’re delighted to release these films giving our customers an insight into the Drytac Academy and Drytac as a company,” says Amanda Brown, global marketing manager at Drytac. “We’re especially excited to provide application highlights for our products, which we hope will help our users achieve fantastic results. For over 40 years we have collaborated with our customers to develop application-specific products and to support them in their application. The new video series is the next step in this support.”

A screenshot from one of the Drytac videos.


Industry Updates

Drytac opens new office, warehouses in the US

Drytac will open new locations in the USA, helping more customers achieve stunning results with Drytac products. A new office will open at the end of February in Richmond, Virginia, staffed by Drytac’s knowledgeable customer service and technical team.

Two new warehouses will open in Northern New Jersey and Atlanta, Georgia, providing additional space for Drytac’s extensive product

range. This expansion will increase delivery speeds to customers across the USA.

Says Wayne Colbath, VP at Drytac, “Our new office and expanded network of warehouses will better suit our customers, as they will have faster access to our full range of wide format print media, mounting and protective films. Rapid project turnaround is essential in many markets served by Drytac and expanding our geographical reach will help our customers achieve this.”

The new Richmond, VA office is located at 5401-B Eubank Road, Sandston, VA 23150.

The Association for Print Technologies (APTech) has announced that its LeadingPrint Summit will be hosted at the National Postal Forum on April 28 at the Orlando World Center Marriott (Orlando, FL).

The Summit is an intensive program developed exclusively for industry leaders who want to change the status quo and renew their lease on success. Based on the concept of radical innovation, attendees will learn the realities of business cycles and how to jump the ‘S-curve’ where commoditisation, cash flow pressure and sales slow-downs can drive a business to a dangerous tipping point.

This intensive program runs 10 am to 5 pm and mixes expert-led instruction, hands-on self-assessment exercises, and discussions with industry practitioners who have successfully made their own business transformation. Every participant leaves with a customised action plan to apply what they learned to their own company.“We’re here to provide maximum value for our APTech members and for the larger print community.

Our LeadingPrint summits are just one of many offerings we provide to our members and industry professionals to help them grow their business. Other offerings include research, publications, an online community forum, and much more. All of what we provide is aimed at helping print professionals grow their businesses with actionable intelligence,” said Thayer Long, president, APTech.

The LeadingPrint Summit is an extension of the organization’s LeadingPRINT magazine, podcast series, and content platform into live events and is designed to bring insight, tools, best-practices, and entrepreneurial success stories to a wider and more diverse audience.

The National Postal Forum is the premier mailing and shipping conference that works directly with the United States Postal Service (USPS) to provide the most comprehensive educational and networking platform available. Offering 100+ educational workshops, USPS Officer-led sessions and the largest industry trade show, NPF offers the ideal opportunity for industry professionals to learn, collaborate and grow their business.

Registration for the LeadingPRINT Summit is now open. To register visit: http://www.leadingprint.org/leadingprintsummit/.

APTech provides a forum to inspire the development of new and valuable print products. The association educates, provides market research, and fosters collaboration between those who create and those who imagine. It is entirely focused on the future of print.

LeadingPrint Summit at National Postal Forum on April 28

General News


M.S. Mani passes awayM.S. Mani, former chief editor of

Malayalam magazine Kala Kaumudi, passed away recently. He was 79. Mani started his career in 1961 as a reporter and was based in Delhi for a while.

He was also the former chief editor of newspaper Kerala Kaumudi. He was a member of the Indian Newspaper Society’s national executive com-mittee. Mani is survived by his wife and two children.

TOI, Dainik Bhaskar join hands against fake news

The Times of India Group along with the Dainik Bhaskar Group has launched an initiative titled, Kaun Banega, Kaun Banayega, which is a series of films to highlight the fake news malaise and educate readers on the importance of reading the newspaper.

Commenting on the initiative, Sivakumar Sundaram, president – Revenue, BCCL, says, “Fake news is a mod-ern-day malaise brought on by social media. It ranges from the silly to grave ‘forwards’ having repercussions that affect the social, economic and cultural fabric of nations. As gatekeepers of the truth and as a leading newspaper company, The Times of India takes on the responsibility of educating people on the need to fol-low real news and not forwards. This is being done in an engaging and humorous manner through a series of films titled, Kaun Banega, Kaun Banayega. We are happy to partner with the Dainik Bhaskar Group to jointly drive this initiative.”

Says Girish Agarwal, promoter-director, Dainik Bhaskar Group, “ Sharing a common responsibil-ity, two of the largest media houses in the country have decided to come together to spread awareness on the menace of fake news. We will continue to work together on this issue and others of citizen and national importance.”

(Courtesy: exchange4media.com)

Reduction in custom duty on newsprint

Thanks to Budget 2020, newspaper businesses are looking forward to sizeable reduction in costs. The industry is finally set to partially recover from the 10 per cent customs duty slapped on newsprint in the July Budget last year. The 5 per cent reduction in custom duty on newsprint comes across as a respite for the industry that is already under pressure with unprec-edented growth of digital media. Those in newspaper businesses welcome the move as it saves them anywhere between Rs 1500 and Rs 1700 per tonne of newsprint.

Newsprint prices have been going through an unsta-ble phase in the last couple of years. In August 2017, the price of newsprint was around Rs 36000 per tone; a year later, the price touched Rs 55000 per tonne. The latest price of newsprint ranges anywhere between Rs 48000 and Rs 50000.

Budget 2020 comes as a huge relief for the industry that has an annual demand of 2.5 million tones of newsprint. Even with high costs newspaper owners are forced to use imported newsprint as the local produc-tion in India is only about 1 million tonne annually. Most in business also complain about the poor quality of local produce that leads to wheel breakage, wastage and hence increases production costs.

(Courtesy : exchange4media.com)

Stable newsprint prices help newspapers reduce cost

Industry experts suggest reduction in raw material purchase cost has in all likelihood saved the entire news-paper fraternity about Rs 1000 crore in overall spends In these times of an economic lull when most indus-tries are trying to stay strong, newspapers in India have reported not just a stable readership but also a comfort-able bottom line in the third quarter of FY20. Thanks to stabilising newsprint prices, newspapers across lan-guages have been able to cut down on production costs, thereby pushing their net earnings higher.

M.S. Mani.


Other News

Some experts suggest that the newspaper indus-try might have saved about Rs 1000 crore from the overall spends of the entire fraternity, just by saving on raw material purchase cost.

HT Media, for instance, reported a consolidated total revenue of Rs 636 crore for Q3 FY20, down by 5 per cent compared to same period last year. However, the PBT was at Rs 42 crore compared to Rs 23 crore recorded in the same period last year. The profit margins for Q3 stood at 19 per cent (vis-à-vis 13 per cent same quarter previous year).

From 2017 to the end of 2019, the newspaper industry in India faced a huge hike in the cost of production as the price of newsprint shot through the roof. The prices went up by as much as 60 per cent, leaving those in the business of print media grappling with increased production cost.

DB Corp reported a PAT growth of 14.4 per cent to Rs 25.09 crore (margin of 14.4 pc). EBIDTA for them registered a growth of 2.6 pc YOY to Rs 424.9 crore (margin of 24 pc) as against Rs 414.2 crore (margin of 22 pc) in 9M FY2019. The oper-ating profit margin expansion was assisted by soft-ened newsprint prices.


Dainik Bhaskar becomes world’s 3rd largest circulated newspaper

DB Corp Limited (DBCL), India’s largest print media company and home to flagship newspapers Dainik Bhaskar, Divya Bhaskar, Divya Marathi and Saurashtra Samachar, announced that Dainik Bhaskar with over 4.3 million copies in circulation has become the world’s third largest circulated newspaper as per the World Association of News-papers and News Publishers’ (WAN IFRA) latest edition of World Press Trends, 2019, Report, the other top two being Yomiuri Shimbun (Japan - 8.1 million copies) and Asahi Shimbun (Japan - 5.6 million copies).

On the back of its continuous focus on editorial and product enrichment and a well-implemented

expansion-drive, Dainik Bhaskar has strengthened its position globally from being at the 35th posi-tion (1.6 million copies) in 2013 to 4th place (3.8 million copies) in 2016 to 3rd largest (4.3 million copies) in 2019.

According to the last published Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) survey data (January – June 2019), Dainik Bhaskar continues to be the largest circulated newspaper of India with a leadership position in key states. WAN IFRA publishes World Press Trends, which is the primary and most authoritative source of data on the newspa-per industry worldwide, annually since 1989 and is now available in an interactive format. The World Press Trends Database provides data and figures on the global newspaper industry in terms of cir-culation, readership, revenue, advertising expendi-ture, digital usage, and data for top-selling titles in each country and more.


Vinod Kumar Shukla wins Mathrubhumi Award

Well-known Hindi poet and novelist Vinod Kumar Shukla won the inaugural Mathrubhumi Book of the Year Award for his Blue is like Blue. The award, which carries a cash prize of Rs 500000, a memento sculpted by well-known artist Riyas Komu, and a citation, has been decided by a three-member jury comprising Shashi Tharoor, Chan-drasekhara Kambar and Sumana Roy.

Shukla lives in Raipur, Chhattisgarh. In 1999, Shukla received the Sahitya Akademi Award for his novel Deewar Mein Ek Khidki Rehti Thi. Renowned for bringing the marvellous to the ordinary, Shukla has long been recognised as one of India’s foremost writers, with a voice uniquely his own. The stories in Blue Is Like Blue deal with ‘smaller-than-life people’.The award was presented by Booker Prize Jury Chair Margaret Busby on Jan 31 at at Mathrub-humi International Festival of Letters in Kanan-kakkunnu, Thiruvananthapuram.


Other News

Hindu Tamil Thisai recognised Central Election Commission

Hindu Tamil Thisai, the Tamil newspaper published by KSL Media, part of The Hindu Group, was awarded the National Media Award by the Central Election Commission of India for carrying outstanding campaign on Voter Awareness & Education during 2019. It is the first Tamil publication and only publication across India to have received the award, for the Print Media Category, from the Election Commission of India, for 2019. The campaign was to sensitise the voters of Tamil Nadu on the importance of ‘informed and ethical voting for stronger democracy’.


Statement about ownership and other particulars about “RIND Survey” the English Monthly Newspaper, Chennai, as required to be published under Section 19-D Sub-Section (b) of the Press and Registration of Books Act read with the Rule 8 of the Registration of Newspapers (Central Rules) 1956

Form IVRIND Survey - Monthly

1. Place of publication : Chennai2. Periodicity of Publication : Monthly3. Printer’s Name : Sashi Nair Nationality : Indian Address : Flat 3C, GRN Akshara

D112, Sangeetha Colony Ashok Pillar Road K.K.Nagar, Chennai – 78

4. Publisher’s Name : Sashi Nair Nationality : Indian Address : Flat 3C, GRN Akshara


5. Editor’s Name : Sashi Nair Nationality : Indian Address : Flat 3C, GRN Akshara


6. Names and addresses of individuals who own the newspaper/magazine and partners or shareholders holding more than one per cent of the total capital:

The Press Institute of India - Research Institute for Newspaper Development

RIND Premises, Taramani, CPT Campus Chennai 600 113

Shareholding of more than one percent of the capital does not arise as the The Press Institute of India - Research Institute for Newspaper Development, is a non-profit society registered under the Societies Act No. XXI of 1860.

I, Sashi Nair, hereby declare that the particulars given above are true to the best of my knowledge and belief. Sashi Nair Publisher01.03.2020

The Department of Printing Technology, Arasan Ganesan Polytechnic College, Sivakasi organised Printer’s Day on February 24 to pay tribute to Johannes Gutenberg – The Father of Printing. A.M.S.G. Ashokan, past president, All India Federation of Master Printers, presided. Principal M. Nandakumar, faculty and students gathered to honour Johannes Gutenberg whose portrait was on view.

Ashokan urged students to showcase their talents and potential, stressing that Indian standards in printing were in no way inferior to international standards and quality. He encouraged them to start their own press. Nandakumar said there was a huge demand for printing students and that they should have a positive attitude and good communication skills.

Picture shows Ashokan, presenting awards to the winners of various competitions.

Phot

o: A

GPC

Remembering Gutenberg, inspiring students


RIND conducts seminar on effective colour management

PII-RIND conducted a seminar on February 21 titled, Colour Management in Prepress.

M. Kanchana, assistant professor, Anna University, Chennai, kickstarted the programme, speaking about applying colour management principles in day-to-day production.

Prabhu Natarajan, research engineer, WAN-IFRA, Chennai, turned the focus on ISO 12647-3 Standards and ICC profiles. He elaborated on the standards available, the profiles to select for newspaper printing, optimising profile settings, and achieving better results with ISO 12647-3

Standards.D. Murugan, manager – Prepress, The Hindu,

Chennai, dwelt on handling images from different sources, importance of monitor calibration, colour separation, fine tuning and adjustments.

Thanu Subramaniam Pillai, consultant, Dinamalar, provided and excellent demonstration of producing better images with Photoshop, complete with tips and techniques.

Production executives from news publishing houses as well as students of printing technology participated.

EVENTS CALENDAR


March June

May

April 6-7, organised by WAN-IFRA, in Delhi: Editorial leaders – Multimedia and Investigative Journalism. More information from [email protected]

April 8-9, organised by WAN-IFRA, in Delhi: Editorial leaders – Audience Development Programme. More information from [email protected]

April 20-21, organised by WAN-IFRA, in Chennai: Editorial leaders – Advance Data Mapping for Journalists. More information from [email protected]

April 22-23, organised by WAN-IFRA, in Chennai: Editorial Leaders – Newsroom Leadership and Change Management. More information from [email protected]

April 23, organised by WAN-IFRA, in Austin, Texas: North American Digital Media Awards. More information from [email protected]

April 23-28, organised by INMA, in Paris: World Congress of News Media. Study Tour/ Seminars/ Media Conference/ Awards. More information on the INMA website.

March 5-6, organised by WAN-IFRA, in Chennai: Newsprint Handling and Waste Control. More information from [email protected]

March 6, organised by WAN-IFRA, in Chennai: Journalism for Non-journalists. More information from [email protected]

March 18-21, organised by FESPA, in Sao Paulo, Brazil: FESPA Brasil 2020. More information on FESPA website

March 23-24, organised by WAN-IFRA, in Dubai: 15th WAN-IFRA Middle East Conference. More information from [email protected] 24-27, organised by FESPA, in Madrid, Spain: Global Print Expo 2020/ European Sign Expo. More information on FESPA websiteMarch 31 – April 1, organised by WAN-IFRA, in Vienna: European Media Digital Awards 2020/ Digital Media Europe 2020. More information from [email protected] / [email protected]

April

2020 May 14-15, organised by WAN-IFRA, in London: Multi-channel Innovation. More information from [email protected]

June 15-16, organised by WAN-IFRA, in UK/ Spain: Pre-Congress Study Tour. More information from [email protected]

June 16-26, organised by drupa, in Dusseldorf, Germany: drupa 2020. More information from [email protected]

June 17-19, organised by WAN-IFRA, in Zaragoza, Spain: 72nd World News Media Congress. More information from [email protected]

July

August 6-7, organised by INMA, in Delhi: INMA South Asia Media Festival. More information on the INMA website

August 19-21, organised by INMA, in Vail, US: The Roundtable at Vail. More information on the INMA website

July 21-22, organised by WAN-IFRA, in Singapore: Asian Media Leaders Summit. More information from [email protected]/ [email protected]

August


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March 2020 | Volume 41 | Issue 3 | Rs 50 www.pressinstitute.in

RIND Survey

1


HOW TO EARN MORE FROM DIGITAL IS THE CHALLENGEAt WAN-IFRA’s Digital Media India 2020 Conference held in New Delhi recently, several ideas were thrown up – including those on digital journalism, digital advertising revenue and alternate revenue streams. Magdoom Mohamed, WAN-IFRA South Asia chief, says one thing was clear: everyone is facing challenges in print advertising growth, and revenue from digital is not commensurate with the loss they face in print advertising. The Internet is 25 years old in India and there are an estimated 600 million Internet subscribers, yet digital revenue has remained at less than 5 per cent of overall revenue, he points out. Magdoom, organiser and curator of the conference each year, says it is important that the news publishers focus their energy on creating compelling content that readers and advertisers are willing to pay for. Snapshots from the conference, above.

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Date of Publication: 1st of every month

44

Documents

RIND Survey...March 2020 RIND Survey 3 FROM THE EDITOR ‘G rowing big in digital’ was the theme for Digital Media India 2020 organised by WAN-IFRA at Holiday Inn, Delhi Aerocity