On 15 December 2016, Telangana Publications started publishing its new English daily, Telangana Today. “We are currently printing about 1.5 lakh copies a day. Although demonetization has restricted us from achieving our planned target of printing about 3 lakh copies a day, we will definitely increase our circulation in near future. Demonetization has severely affected the newspaper industry, so much so that our advertisement revenue
has gone down by more than 30%,” says Ch Srinivas, general manager – operations, Namasthe Telangana, a daily in Telugu published by Telangana Publications.
“We are printing the main edition of Telangana Today on our new manroland Cromoman 4×1 press while the tabloids and magazines accompanying the English daily are printed on the old Manugraph presses,” he adds. At the plant in Telangana city, Telangana Publications has two Manugraph Hiline presses apart from the new Cromoman. Telangana Today is circulated in Hyderabad and Telangana cities, and features a daily tabloid, a weekly Sunday magazine and a monthly magazine along with the main edition.
“The new daily is getting great response from our readers. Telangana Today is a typical daily as far as the state of Telangana is concerned because no English daily is available
as of now which focuses strictly on the issues, development and infrastructure of the new state. Because rest of the dailies are at the national level, they focus more on national-level issues,” says Srinivas.
Apart from Telangana Today, the new manroland Cromoman 4×1 press is also being used to print daily about 2 lakh copies of the main edition of Namasthe Telangana. The new Cromoman, which was put to production on 7 November 2016, is a double-width press with a speed of 75,000 copies an hour. Telangana Publications opted for a double-width press post its decision to come up with an English daily. “According to our analysis at that time, to fulfil our high print orders, we needed at least four Hiline presses, which would require
huge infrastructure—we already have two Manugraph Hiline presses in this plant. Taking this into consideration, along with other factors such as high print orders, and printing of both the dailies simultaneously, we decided to go for a double-width press,” says Srinivas.
The manroland Cromoman 4×1 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 rather an economical solution than Ferag’s standard solution and we are are quite happy with its performance. Also, the support we received from the Ferag engineers was fantastic,” concludes Srinivas.
