It sounds the ultimate logic: Print waterless in the desert. Yet the reasoning behind the choice of technology had more to with flexibility and product needs than the elimination of dampening in a city which is in fact, rich in desalination plants.

Like other newspapers in the region, the ‘Gulf News’ is a hybrid mix of colourful heatset on glossy stock, and bright coldset pages on newsprint.

And one of the advantages of the KBA Cortina press which went on edition in Dubai, UAE, at the beginning of June is the ability to print both heatset and coldset with the same inks.

Webs from four of the 12 4x1 towers can be directed through a dryer… or not, according to production demands… without the need to change inks.

Typically, the ‘Gulf News’ will be a mix of lightweight coated stock and newsprint, but irrespective of whether the press print is printing the flagship title, or one of its glossy or newsprint sections, the benefits in terms of productivity gains over conventional ‘wet offset’ with thermal dryers is considerable.

The press which is the centrepiece of a plant constructed in the middle of the desert – on a industrial estate approximately 60 kilometres outside the city – is notable in at least two other respects: It takes the 34-year-old daily from broadsheet to the Berliner format, and is the manufacturer’s first waterless installation outside Europe, where seven waterless press users were recently among those accepted for membership of WAN-Ifra’s International Newspaper Color Quality Club.

In fact, the ‘News’ first appeared as a tabloid in 1978, but switched to broadsheet in the 1980s. Now it will be interesting to see whether others in the region follow the lead. Massive regional growth has helped the paper from the 3000-copy circulation of its launch to a figure comfortably into six figures as the flagship of a major regional publishing group.

The English-language title is published seven days a week and distributed in the UAE, Bahrain, Oman, Saudi-Arabia, Qatar and Pakistan, and has a daily circulation of more than 120,000 copies.

An online edition, www.gulfnews.com was launched in 1996. The company also publishes magazines – including ‘Friday’, ‘InsideOut’, ‘Aquarius’, ‘Alpha’, ‘Wheels’, ‘Scene’ and the weekly tabloid ‘Xpress’ – runs two English-language radio stations, and is also heavily engaged in cultural and sporting activities.

When then production manager Dean du Toit was in Australia in 2006, a guest speaker at the Single Width Users Group, he told of a bustling city in which two-thirds of the world’s construction cranes were in use, and of population growth from 3.75 million to five million in three years. With production at the plant then up to 5.5 million copies across 66 products with an average of 32 broadsheet pages, investigations were underway then for a successor to the six lines of manroland Cromoman then in use.

Things may have settled a shade since then, but Dubai remains at the centre of a massive UAE boom. The order for the 12-tower KBA Cortina was placed in September 2008, to be accompanied by a comprehensive Ferag mailroom. The highly-automated 80,000 cph double-wide, one-around hybrid press has a total capacity of either 96 full-colour Berliner format pages or 192 of the A4-plus half-fold format. Of these, up to 32 Berliner pages can be printed heatset.

The Ferag mailroom system includes CTI winding and unwinding, two MSD inserting drums, SNT50 inline stitching and trimming, two Sitech label applicators and ten stackers. There are also six polybag lines capable of six onserts, with two gadget feeders.



The paper’s owner, Al Nisr Publishing is a tireless innovator in the Gulf region’s newspaper segment: “For years we have driven advances in newspaper production on the Arabian peninsular with groundbreaking innovations,” managing director Obaid Humaid Al Tayer said at the time of the order.

“We were the first newspaper in the region to include weekly tabloid magazine inserts for leisure activities, families and younger readers, and to adopt a modern layout with in-depth business and sports sections.

“The ‘Gulf News’ was also the first to print small ads separately in special tabloid supplements, to produce certain sections in heatset on coated stock, to automate page production and to use recycled newsprint.”

Delighted with quality and performance of the new press, Obaid Humaid Al Tayer sees the potential for further expansion of the paper’s “acknowledged pole position” in the region.

And he says after a few weeks of production, he is confident that reductions in makeready times, waste, maintenance and labour input will be achieved as a result of the Cortina’s automation and technology.

Peter Coleman with Klaus Schmidt/KBA

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