SFA Print, a sister concern of Sivakasi-based Srinivas Group, wins the Book Printer of the Year Award for recreating a series of rare editions of books, originally published in 1867. While the judges were looking for high-quality printing married to precision in binding, in the series of Thiruvarutpa books, they found much more to admire. “Recreating the books in their original glory needed critical inputs, and in the hands of those who executed the job at the print firm, the very act of printing became a work of art,” said the judges. 

 

There were four books in total. Two of them had run lengths of 5,000 copies, one had 10,000 while the fourth had 500 copies. All the books were laminated on the front and the back after they were structured page-wise, to ensure that the broken pages remained intact. Each page of the editions was scanned individually and cleaned up to avoid dust. 

 

From pagination to pre-press and print, it was all produced in-house. Hot-foiling was perfected on the Sujatha foiling machine and was debossed. Ochsner’s semi-automatic machine was used for edge gilding. For hard-case binding, the Kolbus case-maker and hard cover line were deployed. Finally, to protect the corners of the board, manual pneumatic machine gave it the finishing touches. 

 

The covers had one-colour cloth material while four-colour was used for the inner sections. The 68gsm natural shade pharma paper and 120gsm natural shade Maplitho paper from ITC were used for the text and 130gsm Hi-Kote art paper was used for the cover. 

 

The company, which wins its maiden PrintWeek India Award, is one of the top book plants in Sivakasi. Located on a nine-acre plot, surrounded by peacocks and rare flora and fauna, the SFA Print unit is housed in a 37,000 sq/mt of built-up area. SFA has a team strength of 250 people, who work with a Heidelberg Suprasetter A105 and Heidelberg Speedmaster SM102P, Mitsubishi Diamond LS 1000, KBA Planeta V54, Komori LP37, Komori LP40, plus a raft of pre-press and finishing kit.

 

---

Commended        

International Print-o-Pac

Manipal Technologies

Multivista Global

Replika Press

Thomson Press (I)