Founded in 1924 and inaugurated by Mahatma Gandhi, HT Media is known for its dailies, Hindustan Times (English) and Hindustan (Hindi). The Hindi daily is produced by the company’s subsidiary, Hindustan Media Ventures.
With 19 printing facilities across India and footprint in 15 cities, HT Media dailies are one of the most read dailies in India. During our visit to the Greater Noida plant of HT Media, Prasada, general manager of the supply chain, HT Media, said, “The uniqueness of this plant is that all variety of newsprint technology is available under one roof. Whether it is single and double-width, single or double circumference sheetfet and offset press, you will find everything in this plant. Apart from that, HT plant was the first in the country to install a shaftless machine in 2004.”
The Greater Noida plant prints the two dailies, Hindustan Times and Hindustan, Mint, the English business daily, for its business partner, Wall Street Journal and The Hindu, the English daily. The Noida commercial plant used to print the NCR edition of Hindustan and books. In 2018, the Noida commercial printing plant of HT Media was consolidated with the Greater Noida plant. In the same year, the company launched a tabloid for Hindustan Times, Weekend, distributed on Sunday, for young readers to encourage readership in this segment and for the Hindi daily, a supplement, Hindustan City, was launched.
The plant has 30 newspaper printing towers out of which 20 towers are for double-width and 10 for single-width printing and 9 folders. The plant also has 6 CTPs – 5 from Krauser and one from TechNova. “To further divide these 30 towers, we have 10 towers of Colorman, 10 towers of TKS and 10 of City Line for offset printing,” explained Prasada. During the consolidation, the commercial printing machines including a 5 color Roland, 2 Komori sheetfed machines, and a Harris heatset press, a Welbound perfect stitching machine, were shifted from Noida to the Greater Noida plant.
On the digital front, the company runs five websites, hindustantimes.com,
livehindustan.com, livemint.com, desimartini.com, and shine.com. The company
also owns multiple radio channels including Radio Nasha 107.2 FM, Fever 104 FM, and acquired 51% stakes Next Mediaworks Limited (NMW), under the brand Radio One in 2018.
Talking about the sustainability initiatives, HT Media adopted a local pond in Noida and cleaned it to provide purified water to the locals. “We also have a solar system of 800 kilowatts to power our machines, save cost and bring down the page per cost,” Prasada explained. The plant also has its own paper testing laboratory for improving the paper quality and strength at a lower cost.
