The technical and production stream had some interesting presentations on newsprint wastage and efficiency and notably how Telugu daily Sakshi, published by Jagati Publications, was able to achieve membership in the IFRA Quality Color Club across all its 22 center on its Indian-manufactured Manugraph 2 x 1 web offset presses. Most of its presses are 10 years old and run at an average speed of 40,000 copies an hour with auto-registration systems and in some cases with closed-loop color quality systems.
Generally, International Color Quality Club (ICQC) aspirants gain membership with entries printed on German or Japanese double-width presses at higher speeds, although Indian newspapers routinely win membership to the Quality Club on locally manufactured 2 x 1 presses. Nevertheless, this was the first time that any publisher anywhere in the world won entry to the ICQC for all of its printing plants. Jagati’s chief general manager of operations, TK Suresh, and its general manager for quality and presses, B Gouri Shankar, spoke at Hyderabad about the discipline and preparations, including the internal quality program called Sakshi Internal Quality or ‘SIQ’ that were key to their unique achievement.
Other sessions addressed the compulsions and cost benefits of using lower grammage newsprint and the use of better data tracking and analysis for improving efficiencies. Namasthe Telangana described the many waste reduction benefits of high automation that come along with the latest appropriate technologies of 4 x 1 presses.
More than 60 conference delegates including newspaper owners and top management as well as core production personnel took part in the open house event at the Namasthe Telangana plant near Secunderabad where they could see its manroland Cromoman 4 x 1 and Ferag mailroom in action.
The delegates were impressed by the color reproduction quality at the plant. Publications taking part in the plant visit inlcuded Pratham Alo of Bangladesh, Wijeya Newspapers of Sri Lanka, Lokmat, Sambad Pratidin, Dainik Jagran, Deccan Herald and Vijaya Karnataka. u
