L–R: Jan Kasten, managing director, ppi Media, Ali Al-Assam, founder, KnowledgeView, Hauke
Berndt, managing director, ppi Media at the signing of the agreement at IFRA Berlin
In an announcement at the WAN-Ifra event in Berlin, ppi Media made known that it has acquired the London-based company KnowledgeView Ltd., producer of digital publishing solutions for the MENA region, with immediate effect. The founder of KnowledgeView, Dr. Ali Al-Assam, will join the company from northern Germany as senior vice president for the MENA region. KowledgeView’s Roberto Minio will also be working for ppi Media as senior technical consultant.
ppi Media says that with the acquisition of KnowledgeView Ltd., a leading provider of publishing solutions to the Arab region, existing customers of KnowledgeView will receive excellent support services from a company with more than 30 years of experience in the comprehensive support of media companies—for all levels of support. Customers of KnowledgeView in the MENA region will be able to benefit from ppi Media’s experience in the implementation and support of more than 100 prominent publishing houses and media corporations on four continents. ppi Media provides customers the chance to upgrade to the solutions of the company’s wide range of publishing services.
“The connection between ppi Media and KnowledgeView means that we will be able to offer media companies in the MENA region a very broad range of production solutions. We will support the solutions currently in use, while at the same time offering future-oriented services that will ensure media companies remain competitive. We are proud to be able to work for KnowledgeView’s customers, who are amongst the leading Arabian media companies, from now on,” says Dr. Hauke Berndt, managing director at ppi Media.
“KnowledgeView was founded 22 years ago and has since then developed outstanding publishing technologies that are being used by more than 60% of the most important newspaper productions in the Arab region. Thanks to the leading media company ppi Media, our customers and the media industry as a whole will now benefit from even better services. I am proud to be able to continue working for the Arabian publishing industry with my colleagues as part of ppi Media, and to meet the challenges the media landscape is faced with,” says Dr. Al-Assam.
2023 promises an interesting ride for print in India
Indian Printer and Publisher founded in 1979 is the oldest B2B trade publication in the multi-platform and
multi-channel IPPGroup. While the print and packaging industries have been resilient in the past 33 months since the pandemic lockdown of 25 March 2020, the commercial printing and newspaper industries have yet to recover their pre-Covid trajectory.
The fragmented commercial printing industry faces substantial challenges as does the newspaper industry.
While digital short-run printing and the signage industry seem to be recovering a bit faster, ultimately
their growth will also be moderated by the progress of the overall economy. On the other hand book
printing exports are doing well but they too face several supply-chain and logistics challenges.
The price of publication papers including newsprint has been high in the past year while availability is diminished by several mills shutting down their publication paper and newsprint machines in the past four years. Indian paper mills are also exporting many types of paper and have raised prices for Indian printers. To some extent, this has helped in the recovery of the digital printing industry with its on-demand short-run and low-wastage paradigm.
Ultimately digital print and other digital channels will help print grow in a country where we are still far behind in our paper and print consumption and where digital is a leapfrog technology that will only increase the demand for print in the foreseeable future. For instance, there is no alternative to a rise in textbook consumption but this segment will only reach normality in the next financial year beginning on 1 April 2023.
Thus while the new normal is a moving target and many commercial printers look to diversification, we believe that our target audiences may shift and change. Like them, we will also have to adapt with agility to keep up with their business and technical information needs.
Our 2023 media kit is ready, and it is the right time to take stock and reconnect with your potential markets and customers. Print is the glue for the growth of liberal education, new industry, and an emerging economy. We seek your participation in what promises to be an interesting ride.
