WAN-IFRA South Asia organises OPENDAY programme at Chennai

Key presentations at WAN-INFRA OPENDAY programme were on: Resilience of Printed Newspaper, International Color Quality Club (ICQC), as well as mechanical audit projects and others by WAN-IFRA. The presentations were followed by open session with the participants from the newspaper houses.

Manfred Werfel, Dy CEO of WAN-IFRA, was present on the occasion and spoke on the resilience of printed newspaper. This first-of-its-kind initiative from WANIFRA South Asia gave the participants an opportunity to interact with the experts from the newspaper printing industry. In his address and presentation, Manfred talked and narrated the facts and figures about the printed newspaper industry worldwide that is growing at the rate of 5 percent per annum.

Manfred highlighted that on an average a person spends 40 minutes in a newspaper, as against a mere 30 seconds in digital. “A huge positive circulation impact is seen from the Asian countries, particularly from India,” he commented, also explaining how the new ‘high-value printed products’ are becoming part of the business models.

Magdoom Mohamed, Managing Director of WAN-IFRA South Asia, addressed the gathering on how WAN-IFRA supports the publishing industry to thrive in the business. He explained some new initiatives like ‘print-on-demand’ from WAN-IFRA, which is designed to help the publishers get the research reports of WAN-IFRA, as and when a new report comes, and printed at a nominal price.

Prabhu Natrajan, Research Engineer of WAN-IFRA South Asia, presented a preliminary report on the on-going International Colour Quality Competition (ICQC). He mentioned that increasing quality awareness in the South Asian region has helped to surpass the number of entries from Germany.

M Jaiganesh, Research Engineer of WANIFRA South Asia, presented the ‘Mechanical Audit’ project. This new project from WAN-IFRA employs condition monitoring techniques to analyse the health of the printing press and helps to extend the service life of the presses and to keep the presses in idealistic conditions. He shared some examples based on the successful results of some recent audit projects.

Many prominent executives from the news publishing industry, including L Adimoolam from Dinamalar, joined the WAN-INFRA OPENDAY programme and a team from the newspaper showed some remarkable innovations both in digital and printed products. In the follow-up there was a lively and interactive question and answer session. Starting of the event was opened with a spectacular Bharatanatyam dance performance by young Akshara Murali and a high tea marked the closure of it.