Lokmat has ordered an automatic registration and cut-off control system from manroland web systems India for its new 6 Hi-tower Orient shaftless weboffset newspaper press, which will be installed around December 2016. The new system will be equipped with 10 cameras. Two of these will be special cameras—IRS+ Inline Register Smart including cut-off, which can perform registration as well as cut-offs. The other cameras in the system include IRS Smart and CRS Cut-off Register Smart. “manroland is a renowned name and we are sure the technology is as efficient as all other systems already in the market. The same system is also running on manroland presses at Times of India. We are already using Quadtech system and this time we thought why not try this system as well,” says Neeraj Mahajan, director at Lokmat. According to Mahajan, there is an increase in the circulation of Lokmat and the new 6 Hi-tower Orient will be used to print the additional increased copies.
“The system is manufactured by grapho metronic manroland, a 100% subsidiary, and comes factory fitted in manroland presses. It is already in operation in India on the Cromoman at Times of India. At Lokmat it will run on an Orient press; so far it was run on manroland presses in India. In Europe, we have already fitted this system on non-manroland presses,” says Sudeep Bhattacharjee, managing director of manroland India.
“The system is a stand-alone one, which means it can be retrofitted to almost any press,” quips Prathamesh Vartak, manager – sales at manroland India. “It is very difficult to convince a customer who is already using registration control and cut-off systems of well-known brands. We convinced them nevertheless and they are ready to go with our system. The cameras used in the system are high-speed cameras from Germany.”
According to Bhattacharjee, manroland as a group is doing extremely well for the last one year and its Augsburg factory is full with orders. In the recently concluded drupa in Dusseldorf, manroland sold a couple of Lithoman presses. In India, the company has installed a Cromoman press at Namasthe Telangana. Sharing his views on the industry, Bhattacharjee says, “If you look at the newspaper industry, it is true that people are not certain of the future of newspapers. However, the ground realities are quite different— people, right from the top players to the regional ones, are investing in new presses, which indicates that people still have faith and believe in the potential of the market.”
manroland has also changed its market game plan and has explored new avenues within the print market. “manroland as a press is a Mercedes—it will not sell every day,” feels Bhattacharjee. “Earlier, we were only depending on equipment sales, which perhaps happened once in three years. But now we have changed our outlook; we are talking about blanket wash systems, non-manroland press services and more. These are some of the new things that we have started and this is how we want to instil some energy into the team out here. Our new strategy and projects will keep us busy because one cannot always depend only on selling printing presses.”
