PRESSLINE India shifting gear into full automations and fresh technologies

When it comes to finding out some recent big-way developments at PRESSLINE India, SILVERLINE SLIM would come on the forefront, for the press marked a milestone launch at the company’s Silver Jubilee Year a couple of years ago, offering newspaper and other printing houses the much needed respite, especially cutting down energy consumption, which is the call of the day, today and tomorrow.

“The trend is that newspapers in most parts of the world have reduced the width from 35 inches (889 mm) to 27-28 inches (700 mm), whereas many newspaper printers and publishers are still using full width machines, thus incurring heavy additional cost on consumables and power. In this, SILVERLINE will make consumable cost reduction though print area remains the same, the reduction in metric measurement of plates, rubber rollers and blankets will result in lesser cost,” explains Satish Bajwa.

The bastion behind PRESSLINE India, Satish Bajwa, always has the passion of web offset manufacturing beyond himself, beyond his shortcomings and failures, as he goes with the word of Sister Mary Lauretta: “To be successful, the first thing to do is fall in love with your work.” With the required zeal and focus, 25 years ago Satish began manufacturing PRESSLINE presses, for which he is proud of today to say the ‘brand’ is counted among the best web offset presses designed for newspaper and book productions with clients dotting all over India and beyond across the overseas in Africa, America, Russia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Argentina, Brazil and so on.

New joint move

PRESSLINE India has recently joined hands with India’s leading inkjet machine manufacturer Monotech Systems for development, production and marketing of hi-speed single pass digital inkjet press, PRESSLINE-JetSci, initially to cater the transactional and book printing markets worldwide. “This new digital system is also designed for newspapers where area wise news coverage is to be printed for specific area customers to arouse reader’s interest; the news can be printed in a specified space of the newspaper,” says Satish. He adds, “More interestingly it can be used for localised advertisements for a specified area of newspaper distribution, for example, instantly a mall’s advertisement of an area where the mall’s customers can be printed giving special promotions, discounts etc.”

The unique features and competencies of PRESSLINE-JetSci can reduce cost for advertisers, focusing on specific and required geographies, which otherwise is printed for the entire region the newspaper is distributed. Apart from being area specific which is what the advertiser looks for, this digitised application becomes a USP for the newspaper to attract more advertisers as it gives them better value for money. Moreover, increase in circulation will be yet another important factor PRESSLINE-JetSci can offer.

Installation base

As on today, more the 770 PRESSLINE presses are running around the globe. Of them, some are at some leading newspaper houses in India, like Express Publications (Madurai), Bangalore; Jayadhara Offset Printers, Davanagere; The Indian Express, Lucknow, among others. “Language newspapers in the regional domains have been trying to establish their print facilities at short distances to cover localise news thereby increasing their presence in the mindset of region wise readership. In this, PRESSLINE India has been supporting the move by supplying our presses to augment the trend,” says Satish.

Beyond the newspaper domain, PRESSLINE India is strongly present in the book publishing industry too, with its presses have so far been installed at the production plants of some of the leading book publishers. The mention of some of the leading book publishers now churning their products may include Vikas Publishing House, Sahibabad, Ghaziabad; Arihant Publication India, Meerut; Nageen Prakashan, Meerut; S. Dinesh & Co, Jallandhar; Shree Sai Printers, Nagercoil, Tamil Nadu; Holy Faith International (MBD Group), Sahibabad; Magic International, Noida; Yuvraj Printers, Ahmedabad among others.

“Our initial journey into the book publishing arena began with big presence in Gujarat, and thereafter there has been no looking back. It has been our pride to associate with book publishing giants like Repro, IPP, Vikas, Arihant, Nageen, MBD Group, etc, as they found the quality our web presses deliver very close to outputs from sheet-fed machines, with our added advantage of folding saving massive man power cost as well as any investment on folding equipment,” tells Satish.

PRESSLINE India has their own designs and patterns in their presses. The company’s PRIMA Series are what no one else could compete. The frames of the presses are wider and heavier, the towers are having 8 RCRs as compared to four in case of other similar machine. These features help in achieving registration much faster. These models can adopt all requisite automations at any stage.

Automation trends

These days, automation is the buzzword at PRESSLINE India. “We have developed single and double roll stand with motorised web tension control system which keeps web tension consistent throughout besides acting as infeed of each web. Independently and automatically web tension controls both rolls at a time from maximum diameter to minimum diameter. The same system is provided in our automatic splicers. These systems are much more accurate as compared to pneumatic brakes,” explains Satish.

Among some automated features of PRESSLINE presses is the Outfeed System, which controls automatic web tension in between printing unit and folder, which improves printing quality as well and results into wastage control. Auto Splicer is yet another feature as double roll stand cum splicer is very much in demand since printer can use two rolls besides changing the rolls automatically when one web is being printed.

Future perfect

Talking about the future of printed newspapers in India, Satish says the newspaper circulations in Europe and the USA are at logger heads, but India registers 8 percent growth, and it’s astounding. “Corporate sector depends heavily on print product advertising as much as over 42 percent and in the same breadth the figure is far lower in the US standing lesser than 14 percent; over the last six years the Indian advertising rose above 40 percent,” observes Satish.

“This astounding growth happening in the Indian newspaper industry can be squarely attributed to the vernacular dailies. Confined content, spurt in education, better connectivity are all responsible for this. Dainik Jagran takes the cake with 16.65 million readers,” says Satish, adding that the scenario seems steady with the print media growing at least for next 5-6 years with innovative ideas like UV/LED applications on glazed newsprint to give greater value to advertisers which is now the trend using cold set webs and partial digital printing on the way will give handsome jump to the circulation and revenue as well.

Satish says everything in the market is now moving on positive paths. He opines, “Though there is hue and cry regarding levy of GST on newsprint the newspaper industry with increasing advertising should be able to absorb the shocks and grow in readership, and there is still a huge gap between availability and unavailability of internet in rural areas; similarly, whatever the projections may be the educated masses are pegged at a mere 35 percent which in time will be the add on readership of printed newspapers.”

The industry, be it manufacturing, printing machines, software and the print media itself should stand by the mantra—invest in growth, be proactive and stay close to your customer, according to Satish. He further adds that everybody in the industry should focus on brand, brand building can be very hard to do but all depends on knowing who is customer and why others are co-operating. “Focus on your people, one of the toughest challenges the publishing industry is facing today. Invest in quality in all products. Naming the new innovation creates internal excitement, very importantly” Satish urges.