A fully automated new rotary printing press at reiff medien.
Photo ppi Media
After switching to a new rotary printing press, reiff medien now has a fully automated workflow in which it can exchange data between the Pecom printer management system and the PlanPag planning solution from ppi Media.
The local newspaper production teams at reiff medien have been using a new rotary printing press from Manroland since November 2021. During the commissioning process, ppi Media integrated various interfaces to automate communication between the print presetting system and the PlanPag planning solution, which is used for daily newspaper production at reiff medien.
As a result, the machine’s printing options are now transferred to PlanPag so that they can be taken into account during the production process. PlanPag, in turn, communicates the relevant information to ppi Media’s solution for printing form production, OM, which forwards this planning information and additional proofs of the pages and color preset information to Pecom.
By automating the production workflow in this way, various manual processes have been eliminated from daily newspaper production at reiff medien, thus reducing the susceptibility to errors, “We’ve been working successfully with ppi Media for many years. The focus of our cooperation has clearly been on automating and streamlining our production processes. ppi Media has a great deal of expertise and extremely experienced project managers in this field”, says Achim Kara, managing director of reiff Printservice GmbH.
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.
