Strategy is to make blankets cost-effective for newspapers

What’s new?
According to Rishi Vidhavan of Fujikura, a trend in the newspaper industry is UV printing blankets for the web presses.

S Giridharan, CEO, Kapoor Imaging too agrees that the trend is moving towards UV printing. For this, Giridharan says, “Kapoor Imaging has launched its UV combi blankets successfully.” Meanwhile, he adds that high- speed narrow gap has moved to metal back blanket (MBB). 

The blanket market
With the Indian newspaper industry still reporting growth, what are the consumption patterns of printing blankets in Indian newspaper market?

According to Giridharan of Kapoor Imaging, the data varies due to the sudden slump in demand as most newspapers have raised their ‘goal post’ from seven million impressions to 10 million impressions.

“This happened due to the steep increase in newsprint prices. Every newspaper is affected by this and they are looking for ways and means to reduce cost. They have reduced pages, and they have started to take more mileage out of blankets,” he says.

Giridharan says, Kapoor Imaging understands the situation and is trying to help the industry by launching some new products which can give more mileage.

According to Giridharan, his company’s share in the Indian newspaper market is between 30 and 35%.

Plans for newspapers
According to Vidhavan, the strengths of Fujikura rubber blankets have been with the newspaper industry. “We are constantly trying to improve the quality and value of the product at the customer’s end with better dot transfer and better mileage,” says Vidhavan.

Maniraju Bora, sales and technical director for the South West Asia region, Trelleborg, says, his company’s mission is to provide the Indian printing industry with training, advice and after-sales support that is unrivalled.

“The blanket is crucial to the profitability of the press and we increasingly help newspaper groups use blanket technology to reduce cost-per-copy on its presses. Our experts provide training on selecting the correct blanket, settings on the press, and maintenance and storage of fabric-backed and metal-backed products,” he adds.

According to Vishwas Dharm, regional manager, sales and tech support, Novurania, the depreciation of the rupee in the past six months had a negative impact on the overall industry. As a result, the import cost has gone up approximately by 10-12%. “It has been difficult to absorb this cost, as margins are already limited, especially in the newspaper segment. So, we are waiting for the rupee to get more stable and accordingly, we will plan for the Indian market,” he says.

Meanwhile, Kapoor Imaging will be launching products that shall help newspapers reduce cost.

Lack of technology know-how
It’s a fact that most workforce on the shopfloor in the industry is not technically sound. Under the circumstances, is this lack of knowledge about printing technology a critical issue in the Indian print industry? If so what are the blanket manufacturers doing to address the issue?

Vidhavan agrees that it’s a serious issue. “Fujikura has seen that many of the operators are not trained, however, the trend is changing,” he says, adding, “In the last five years, there has been a trend among the presses to engage trained and educated operators who are more sensitive to printing machines and consumables that are used. They also focus a lot on the maintenance part of the overall press, as the entire machinery in the press is important and keeping that in check is beneficial for the organisation.”

Giridharan agrees. He says that today, all top newspaper publishers have their own training departments and most newspapers hire only printing graduates from reputed institutions.

“The fact is we learn from newspapers, as they are innovative. Newspaper publishers keep looking at new trends and we have to keep ourselves abreast of latest trends in newspaper printing to be able to help them,” Giridharan says.

He adds that Kapoor Imaging does offer training to operators on a new product. “Again, it’s a mutual learning, as they come back with some specific issues, and at times, we need to develop customised solutions. Working with Indian newspapers is like going to an open university. We learn from our customers,” he says.

Lack of knowledge is always a critical issue whether it’s a printing or any other industry, says Dharm. One must have enough knowledge to get the optimum output and utilisation of the product/ technology.

However, Dharm too agrees that in the recent times, the ways of gaining/ sharing knowledge has increased as compared to a couple of years ago by means of social media, internet, and online groups. “We keep on updating our customers about the new developments that we make in our products and also the other secondary products which are related so that there is an improvement at the final product,” he adds.

Bora concurs. “In-depth knowledge is becoming even more important because of the rapidly mutating landscape in the industry. For instance, the growing use of different stocks that have their own surface characteristics, the implementation of UV, low-migration inks, high-density pigment inks, neutral founts, FM screening and more have a major impact on the printing process and the printing blanket,” he adds.