IFRA

With the start-up of the third and final Mitsubishi 4 x 2 Diamondstar press line Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Printing & Packaging Machinery completed the Kiba plant project of Yomiuri Shimbun, the world’s largest daily circulation newspaper with approximately 10 million copies. The Kiba plant is located in the heart of Tokyo. The first two Diamondstar press lines installed at the Kiba plant started production in March 2010. All three press lines are equipped with the Diamond-Eye closed-loop print quality control system (in the picture).
 

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IFRA Expo took place in Hamburg from 4 to 6 October 2010. The main trends in the area of print production continue to be towards automation and increasing efficiency on the one hand, and creating or expanding business possibilities on the other hand. In the following, read interviews with suppliers in the area of printing presses and mailroom equipment that were conducted before the exhibition. The interviews are reproduced here in the original language in each case:

• Georg Riescher, manroland  (German)
• Klaus Schmidt, Koenig & Bauer (German)
• Eric Bell, Goss International (Englisch)
• Noel C. McEvoy, Wifag (German)
• Jürg Möckli, Ferag (German)
• Anna Karin Jönsson, Schur Packaging Systems (Englisch)
• Georg Riva, Müller Martini  (German)
• Andreas Funke, Tolerans (German)

The Times of India and The Hindu are the first newspapers to let a printed advertisement talk: For this, an electronic chip was pasted on an ad page for Volkswagen (in a time-consuming manual process), which, as soon as the newspaper is opened, starts its acoustic promotion. Some readers are reported to have received quite a shock!

· Link to the video

 
On Saturday, 28 August, the focus of BILD and BILD.de will be on 3D.BILD: Europe's largest daily newspaper is entering the third dimension and will become the first German daily newspaper to be published completely in 3D. All photos, graphics and ads in the national edition as well as all regional editions can be viewed in so-called "red-cyan anaglyph" mode. The three-dimensional effect is achieved by looking through special glasses, supplied free of charge to BILD readers together with their newspaper edition.

In addition to the daily news production, the BILD newsroom researched and prepared further exclusive contents for the 3D edition. "Avatar" producer James Cameron explains the future of 3D technology in an interview, boxer Vladimir Klitschko puts up his fists to the readers and the football stars playing in the German premier league come to life.

It is not just the editorial content of the 3D BILD edition that is a highlight, but also its advertising. Advertisers such as Volkswagen, Media Markt, Ferrero, Toto Lotto, Universal Pictures International Germany, to nmae but a few, are represented.

Germany's most successful news portal comes alive

The trend towards §D has also reached Germany's most successful news portal. BILD.de offers users a 3D world that they can access directly via the home page. It presents an extensive photo gallery, specially produced videos, clips of international pop stars, short films and games in this special mode. All the user needs to view this special content on BILD.de is a normal computer monitor and 3D glasses. This 3D world will remain in existence beyond 28 August and will be extended continuously.

Parallel to BILD and BILD.de, Arte, the French-German TV station, will show films in the 3D mode on 28 August 2010. Viewers can use the glasses supplied by BILD also for TV.

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The research by Dr. Ahmed Mahmoud Yosri Ahmed (Teacher, Faculty of Applied Arts, Printing, Publishing & Packaging Sector, Helwan University, Cairo, Egypt) sets out to establish an up-to-date, multi-parameter paper & board grades classification methodology, avoiding all the problems involved with the actual classification method based on weight. Also this new methodology should cover all the paper, board & corrugated grades, without any exception or restriction that grammage classification implies.

29 June 2010. All is going according to plan. Following the roofing ceremony on 18 March 2010, installation of the production systems at the new Druckzentrum Rhein-Main printing centre in Rüsselsheim, Germany, is proceeding apace. A 40 t crane was installed to bring the components of the printing press into position. The crane will be removed when the work is completed. The Wifag is scheduled to be fully assembled by the end of July. Also being installed are the finishing systems in the 140 m-long and d 45 m-wide hall that is attached to the presshall that, despite its size and due to enormous steel girders, manages without disturbing supporting struts. The two chief executive officers, Ulrike Köhler and Michael Rettich, state that the project is running on time; production is scheduled to begin in November. The printing centre is a joint project of Verlagsgruppe Rhein Main (Mainz) and Verlagshaus Südhessen (Darmstadt).

• Link to article and video on the website of the Wiesbadener Kurier

Druckzentrum Rhein-Main (DRM) in Rüsselsheim, Germany, has reached the halfway point of construction and celebrated on 18th March 2010 with a roof-raising ceremony.

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Semi-commercial jobs which would normally require heatset printing are being produced in coldset at the Singapore Press Holding (SPH) Media Centre Plant on their manroland UNISET press using various types of newsprint. "We have done posters, leaflets, newsletters & magazines. Our customers include banks, retail outlets, government bodies, hospitals, associations, etc.," says Anthony Cheng, Executive Vice-President of Production at SPH. "The financial crisis actually brought about opportunities in that companies that are used to glossy heatset promotional materials are driven to look at alternatives because of budget constraints, and have begun to accept coldset newsprint stock (of higher grammage 70-95 gsm and wood-free or hybrid grade that are much brighter in shade) as an viable alternative, achieving more or less the same marketing objectives. This has brought about an unexpected but much welcome revenue stream to us,” he said. Cheng’s team has also broke new grounds by successfully printing on translucent newsprint with coldset printing process and normal coldset inks.

To cut costs and to save money in the process of newspaper production throughout the value chain – from editorial to advertising, to administration, production, sales and distribution – is an issue for newspaper executives all over the world. We asked representatives of WAN-IFRA committees and expert groups to let us know which cost reduction projects they run today or plan to start in the near future and what effects they had or expect from these measures.

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If you would like to contribute to this collection of cost reduction ideas, please send your comments to editor@wan-ifra.org with the subject: cost reduction. Thank you.

The Colour Quality Self-Check is an online tool that is accessible free of charge to anybody. It allows you to check your colour print quality by printing the IFRA test element and input the measured values into an online form. The immediate results of an automatic evaluation will show you, were your quality stands. If you want IFRA to do the measurements, use the Color Quality IFRA Check model.

• www.ifra.com/qualitycheck

This report is based on a statistical analysis of the results tests done in the WAN-IFRA Research & Material Testing Centre in Chennai, India, for a period of one year. The report analyses the basic and printability properties of the newsprint and newsink used in Indian news publishing industries and reports the quality levels of the materials available in the Indian market.

• Report Download
• RMTC website: www.wan-ifra.org/rmtc

Visit the blog to get impressions of the WAN-IFRA Study Tour covering four cities in three days, visiting five printing plants and a paper mill.

 "New Printing Plants" is the title of a new WAN-IFRA Special Report. It originates from a project that was managed by a German-Indian research group with researchers from the Technical University of Chemnitz and the University of Manipal. The IFRA South Asian Committee steered the project. Although the starting point was clearly focused on the Indian market, the guidelines and detailed checklists provided are, without any doubt, of high value for newspaper companies all over the world that are about to start projects to build new printing plants.

The 64-pages report is already online in English; German and French versions will folllow: free download for WAN/IFRA members from

• www.ifra.com/specialreports

Due to former technical limitations, the existing Ifra barcode (introduced in the early 1980s) mixes identification and information about the reel. At the same time the space for additional information is limited and cannot be exceeded with the existing barcode structure, despite the fact that there is a growing need for adding more information. A new system must serve the needs of up-to-date techniques, workflow demands and future technical requirements.

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