More information is emerging about the latest Kasturi & Sons printing plant for ‘The Hindu’ in Coimbatore, India, where a fifth Mitsubishi DiamondSpirit 4x1 press was commissioned in January. Like others in the group, the plant also includes a comprehensive Ferag mailroom system. Kasturi has similar Mitsubishi presses in Hyderabad and Chennai, where its headquarters are located. 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 when ROI, production reliability and uniform print quality were all taken into account, the highly automated 4x1 double-width Mitsubishi was 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 4/4 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 Kasturi has four DiamondSpirit presses in Hyderabad and Maraimalainager, near Chennai, configured as semicommercial presses with ovens for each full colour web. Presses at the Chennai plant also have stitchers.