On 7 November 2016, Namasthe Telangana, a Telugu language daily in Hyderabad owned by Telangana Publications, started production on its new manroland Cromoman 4 x 1 press. “Right now we are printing a minimum of 1.5 lakh copies a day. However, we plan to increase the number to 3.5 lakh by the end of November 2016,” says Srinivas Ch, GM operations of Namasthe Telangana. “We will also start printing our English daily, Telangana Today, on this press by the end of November.”
“The new press is running absolutely fine; it is a new kind of experience for our team with all types of innovations and automation features of the press. We are happy with the print output and the working condition of the press. However, just a little more fine-tuning of the press is required to get the desired quality; manroland engineers are helping us on that front, and we will reach there soon. As far as mechanical and electrical conditions of the press are concerned, they are fully in place,” says Srinivas.
The new Cromoman is a doublewidth press with a speed of 75,000 copies an hour. Srinivas says, “We went for a double-width press after we decided to start an English daily, Telangana 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.”
“The modern insertion and gluing features of the press, and printing innovations like flaps, panorama printing, window printing amongst others can provide great advantage in bringing in different innovations to newspapers,” shares Srinivas. “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.”
The manroland Cromoman 4 x 1 press is supported by a brand new Ferag mailroom system which, according to Srinivas, is the first of its kind in India. “The Ferag at our plant is a beautiful system customized according to the Indian environmental and economic conditions. So it is an economical solution rather than Ferag’s standard solution and we are are quite happy with its performance. Also, the support we got from the Ferag engineers is fantastic,” concludes Srinivas.
