Growth stories for Hindi publishers

Jun 16, 2010 at 01:16 am by Staff


Indian publishers in the Hindi market, Dainik Bhaskar Group and Kasturi & Sons are going for growth with a raft of new colour production capacity across the country.

DB has commissioned the second of seven KBA Prisma presses it ordered at the end of 2007, while Kasturi – publisher of ‘The Hindu’ brought its fifth Mitsubishi DiamondSpirit on stream in Coimbatore in South India, early this year.

The DB Group order – placed through its Diligent Media Corporation and DB Corporation enterprises – totals 25 Prisma towers for multiple locations. The first of these, with four towers configuration, went live in December 2008 in Bangalore, followed by an eight-tower press in Jaipur last July.

Then in November, the biggest installation – with three sections and nine towers – was inaugurated in Ahmedabad, northwest India, with the ceremony attended by more than 2000 people.

Like the Kasturi presses, DB has chosen a double-width, one-around press configuration which combines high productivity with flexibility and other advantages.

The fleet of Prismas is also evidence of the steep growth trajectory pursued by the Indian print media, particularly in the north-western and south-western states. While the newspaper industry in many European countries, the USA and Japan has been severely hit by competition from the internet, with many titles seeing their circulations steadily dwindle, printed newspapers in India (and other densely-populated countries) still offer huge potential for growth fuelled by increasing prosperity.

The DB companies will use their new colour capabilities to boost circulations of titles which include ‘Dainik Bhaskar’ – claimed to be India’s biggest Hindi newspaper – Gujarat regional ‘Divja Bhaskar’ and English-language daily ‘DNA’ (Daily News & Analysis). Established in 2005, ‘DNA’ has grown quickly and includes entertainment and business sections.

DB Group director Girish Agarwaal says the new press project has been an unmitigated success: “We are all delighted at being able to complete such a major investment bang on time despite a challenging economic environment,” he says. “Our award-winning marketing strategies have been highly effective, and in tandem with our high-powered KBA press technology give us grounds for boundless optimism. Over the next few years we are confident of maintaining or even enhancing the growth trajectories we have achieved in the print sector in previous years. For us, the printed word is still the most authentic way of disseminating information.”

Although the DB Group originally focussed on production plants in Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Jaipur, after conducting a painstaking market survey the final choice was changed to Ahmedabad, Jaipur and Bangalore. Of the seven Prisma press lines ordered, six were brought on stream within the space of one year. The location for the seventh press has not yet been confirmed.
Sharad Patel, who is responsible for engineering at the Ahmedabad plant, says the transition went without a hitch: “Alongside their much bigger colour capabilities, the presses offer us unprecedented format flexibility and output levels.”

The Ahmedabad line can print a 72-page all-colour product in three sections at 85,000 cph. Prefolding facilities in the KF 5 folders allow quadruple spread ads or posters.

Feedback from readers and advertisers has been “overwhelmingly positive”, according to Rakesh Singh, head of production in Gujarat State. “Since the new press line came on stream at our plant in Ahmedabad more than 5000 visitors have come to see the Prismas in action,” he says.

“We have become a showcase for cutting-edge newspaper press technology in India and are helping to open the door for KBA to a market with enormous growth potential. This is typical of the DB Group mentality: We are a leader, not a follower.”

The Japanese-built Mitsubishi DiamondSpirit press at Kasturi & Sons printing plant for ‘The Hindu’ in Coimbatore, is the fifth of this 4x1 design to be commissioned by the group and is accompanied by a comprehensive Ferag mailroom.

Kasturi has similar Mitsubishi presses in Hyderabad and Chennai, where its headquarters are located. The Chennai presses are configured for semicommercial production with ovens for each full colour web, and have stitchers.

The company publishes the daily ‘The Hindu’, which has a circulation of more than 1.4 million, and publishes and prints business daily ‘Business Line’, weekly sports magazine ‘Sportstar’ and a fortnightly current affairs magazine called ‘Frontline’.

It has a staff of more than 3500 at its 12 printing plants in India, and contracts work out to two other sites.

The second largest city of Tamil Nadu (after Chennai), Coimbatore is a textile and manufacturing hub known as the Manchester of South India. It is also becoming an important IT and business process hub.

Managing director Kasturi Balaji says ROI, production reliability and uniform print quality made the highly automated double-width Mitsubishi the “perfect match” for medium-sized plants such as Coimbatore.

The 75,000 cph press has a cutoff of 546 mm and a web width of 1397 mm. It has two four-colour towers and an additional mono unit with a 2:2 double rotary folder, three reelstands and provision for hybrid heatset printing in the future. Mitsubishi control systems include press and ink presetting with CTP interface, colour register control and dual web tension control.

Products are delivered via two Ferag UTR Universal conveyors in 2:1 mode to individual MultiStack stackers, while Ferag’s LineMaster handles programmed bundling and topsheet printing. Individual bundles are foil-wrapped and strapped.

Page PDFs come from the head office in Chennai, where CCI’s NewsGate editorial is installed. Local pages – created in Coimbatore – are also accessed via the centralised CCI system through WAN. These are processed through Agfa Arkitex software, with Fuji LP-NNV plates made on two Agfa Advantage 3850 DL platesetters, each of which produces about 75 broadsheet plates an hour at 1270 dpi.

Kasturi says the company wants to strengthen its position in the market place and is expanding both circulation and advertising options: “State-of-the-art production and a high level of automation are basic prerequisites here,” he says.
Sections: Newsmedia industry

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