A comprehensive package of measures was put together by ppi Media in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing its employees to work from home – wherever possible – to ensure their health and safety and fully maintain the company’s support services. This has allowed ppi Media to ensure the full continuation of its customer care. As a result, publishing customers in India can be sure that their newspaper production will not run into technical difficulties in a general state of emergency. This applies to all ppi Media solutions – from planning to content creation.
ppi Media’s uninterrupted performance is also supported by the fact that the company officially forms part of Germany’s critical infrastructure. This means that employees at ppi Media can make use of options like emergency childcare when necessary.
Partner in crisis situations
ppi Media is also expanding its range of services for international publishing customers to ensure the maintenance of critical infrastructure in the current situation. In recent weeks, for example, the company has helped its customers to ensure the connection of employees working from home and to outsource production to new printing houses when printing service providers have been at risk of inactivity. “We’re actively approaching our customers to determine potential issues where we can offer support. Our international customers, such as publishing companies in India, can rely 100% on our services. Our Indian customers will also receive free licenses for our e-paper solution until the end of the corona crisis to ensure digital distribution options for newspapers”, explains Hauke Berndt, chief executive officer of ppi Media. “We’re pleased to see that our technologies and structures developed in recent years offer our customers a high level of reliability in the current situation”.
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.
