Bennett-Coleman, owner of The Times of India is one of the most important newspaper publishers among the customers of manroland web systems. The company relies on Colorman, Geoman, Regioman, and doublewidth Cromoman 4 x 1 systems. To continue building on its leading position in the Indian market, the Times of India has decided to expand its printing capacities in the Delhi region and increase its flexibility in Mumbai. The remarkable thing about this project was that it involved moving existing towers and reconfiguration of presses in two plants without stopping the daily production in either location.
Two Geoman printing towers were recently moved from the TOI plant in Mumbai to the publisher’s Sahibabad location in the Delhi National Capital Region where an existing Geoman system was expanded to include six towers. TOI now has the capacity to produce 48 broadsheet color pages in this press line in a single section. Color advertising is driving the growth of Indian dailies especially during the festival season in the fall. Now complete, the new configuration makes it possible to print newspapers with 40 or 48 color pages in a single section. Due to the collaboration between engineers from the main publishing house and colleagues from Manroland India, the time required to convert the Geoman and get it back up and running was considerably reduced.
Colorman in Mumbai
The Times of India is also the main user of Colorman systems in India. To ensure even greater flexibility in terms of page numbers, two presses in Mumbai were connected across all sections. An additional web path guides two webs from one system through the balloon-former to the folder on the second system. This enables the printing of products with up to four 16-page sections or 64-page newspaper copies. Moreover, the original web path can still be used. In addition to additional web leads and turner bar levels, manroland web systems installed a new register control system.
Project lead Ralf Schädlich explains, “The challenge with this project was that the entire system still needed to be available for daily production. The customer could only offer to take a short break from using the system for three days. During this time, we also needed to do all testing and commission the system. At night, the presses kept running at full capacity. The actual conversion process took place in less than three weeks.”
