Dubai's Masar Printing & Publishing is on stream with a high speed digital newspaper line based on Kodak and manroland equipment.

The government-owned UAE publisher and printer is in production after announcing its intention to buy a Kodak Prosper 6000C inkjet at WAN-Ifra's 2014 World Publishing Expo in Amsterdam.

An order for manroland's FoldLine newspaper finishing system followed, and the systems are now in production.

Dubai Media printing and distribution chief executive Faisal Bin Haider says that as the first to acquire the fastest digital press, it chose the highly developed FoldLine to approach "full and comprehensive flexibility" between printing and finishing: "We aim to run the Kodak Prosper 6000 C in multi-shift-operations, a one shop-stop from reel to delivering the final product - which exceeds the customers' expectations," he says.

"Markets and customers are variable factors, their requirements may change in minutes. By gathering these technologies under one roof, Masar Printing & Publishing will have a competitive advantage, providing the local and regional customers with key solutions for making minute differences in delivering the product at the right cost, quality, and quantity, and right on time."

Masar's FoldLine has "all possible options" for maximum flexibility during production, able to handle everything from book blocks to newspapers and glued, as well as stitched commercial products. WorkflowBridge and MasterQ plug-ins integrate it with the Kodak workflow, making it possible to optimise, sort and verify job sequences.

Masar's giant print site already houses three hybrid Cromoman presses equipped with four heatset dryers, a Lithoman heatset web and sheetfed equipment.

Pictured: (from left) Mike Ziegler (Dynagraph for Printing, Dubai), Samer Abdel Quader (chief operating officer) and Faisal Salem Bin Haider (executive director at Masar Printing & Publishing), Alwin Stadler (manroland digital printing vice president) and Christoph Blank (executive sales manager at manroland web systems)