With the installation of the Cromoman, we have overcome the myth that double-width presses are restricted to English dailies only [in Telangana]. Double-width presses can go with regional dailies as well, and we are proud that we have set the trend for all language dailies in the state that they too can run a double-width press – Srinivas Ch, GM-operations of Namasthe Telangana.
Namasthe Telangana, a Telugu language daily in Hyderabad owned by Telangana Publications is getting all set to start production on its new manroland Cromoman 4 x1 press from October 2016. Installed at a newly built plant adjacent to its old plant, the new press is in the commissioning stage. In the near future, the two Manugraph Hiline presses at the adjacent old plant will be shifted to the new plant and will run alongside the Cromoman. The third press at the old plant, Orient Xcel 3600, will be relocated to another site after which the old plant will be used to store paper reels and other material.
The newspaper has also ordered two Ferag mailroom lines, four in-line stacking machines, chilling system from Shree Refrigeration and violet Agfa Advantage NSL CtP with Nela. The installations of all these will start in August 2016 and the Cromoman starts production with the all new peripherals in October 2016.
The new Cromoman is a doublewidth press with a speed of 75,000 copies an hour. Srinivas Ch, GM operations of Namasthe Telangana, says, “We went for a double-width press after we decided to start an English daily, Namasthe Today. According to our analysis at that time, to fulfil our high print orders, we would need to install at least four Hiline presses which would require huge infrastructure – we already have two Manugraph Hiline presses in this plant. Considering this and things like high print orders, and printing both the dailies simultaneously amongst other critical activities, we thought that we should go for a double-width press.” According to Srinivas, Namasthe Today, will hit the market in October 2016 with an initial circulation of 3 lakh, with the bigger share of over 2 lakh going to Hyderabad alone. With 16 main pages, Namasthe Today will contain a 16-page tabloid as well as a weekly Sunday special and a monthly magazine.
“Meanwhile I contacted several newspaper press manufacturers as well as visited several plants, including Times of India’s Kolkata plant, to see their presses running. Times of India has installed the same Cromoman press at its Kolkata plant. After my visits, we decided to invest in the Cromoman as it is manufactured according to Indian working conditions and is suitable for the Indian market. Also all double-width presses require AC rooms except Cromoman which has an individual cooling system in each tower, which means we don’t require any AC for the entire plant. This matters a lot, particularly in India.” The new Cromoman at Namasthe Telangana has an option of adding two more towers in future. “We will add the other two towers within two years and have even finalized the deal commercially,” he says.
New innovations
The new Cromoman has insertion and gluing features, and printing innovations like flaps, panorama printing, window printing amongst others. Srinivas says that the new Cromoman will provide great advantage in bringing in different innovations to the newspaper. Srinivas says, “As far as window printing, flaps or panorama printing is concerned, no other Telegu newspaper has ever tried them till now. These innovations will definitely provide our Telegu readers a completely different reading experience. This is going to be one of the biggest milestones for Telegu readers because they think that these types of innovations pertain to only English dailies. So apart from Telangana Today, we will introduce these innovations to Namasthe Telangana also.”
More tabloids in the offing
With a circulation of about 5.3 lakh, Namasthe Telangana publishes seven editions for all 10 districts of Telangana – Adilabad, Nizamabad, Karimnagar, Warangal, Khammam, Nalgonda, Medak, Ranga Reddy, Hyderabad and Mahbubnagar. With the new Cromoman, Srinivas is hopeful about increasing the circulation of Hyderabad alone to 3 lakh, which at present is 1.8 lakh. “Right now our demand-supply ratio has a mismatch as the existing resource is unable to meet the growing demand. We will straighten it out in coming days after the Cromoman runs in full swing.” The Telegu daily also publishes ten daily tabloids unique to all ten districts, two weekly tabloids related to health and education, as well as a 4-page daily broadsheet feature called Zindagi. At present, the Hyderabad plant prints three tabloids for three districts. “However, 11 October onwards the districts in Telangana will be increased to 24. So, we will also need to increase the number of tabloids to 24. The three districts that we cater to right now will get converted to seven districts. So we will print seven tabloids at this plant after that.”
Trendsetter in mobile apps
According to Srinivas, when the digital edition of Namasthe Telangana was started in 2010, its Alexa ranking was above 50 lakh. Today its global ranking has improved and is in the 9K bracket. In the same year, for the first time in Telegu language, Namasthe Telangana introduced Unicode font to its website. The website was officially launched in 2011 which attracts about 4 lakh daily visitors with a monthly page view of 1.4 crore. In 2012, first of its kind, the newspaper launched its dedicated IOS (about 35K downloads) and Android-based (about 90K downloads) apps for mobiles and tablets. “Prior to us, no Telegu daily ever had dedicated mobile apps for its newspaper. Right now we are having considerable revenue from online – we are generating around 15 to 20 lakh monthly and my target is to reach 35 lakh per month by the end of 2017,” concludes Srinivas.
manroland web systems’ FoldLine and FormerLine
Expanding expertise in the digital print market
manroland web systems has successfully expanded its applied expertise in the digital print market. Using its own know-how, the company has developed digital print finishing modules such as the pin folder FoldLine and the FormerLine. Paired with the finishing components FoldLine and FormerLine from manroland web systems, a modern digital printing system can produce complete book blocks in an end-toend process. Even auxiliary gluing can be integrated as required. This leads to a substantial reduction in costs involved in conventional book production.
Overall systems with flexible solutions such as offline/nearline or complete in-line concepts can also be offered and integrated. With short and very shortruns, digital printing enables production ‘on demand,’ which eliminates costs for logistics, warehousing, and over production. Digital printing is thus a flexible and extremely fast method of book production, which manages to unite books and readers more quickly. ‘Ready for dispatch in two days!’ Digital printing makes good on this promise.
