PrintWeek India Awards 2018: Malayala Manorama is the Newspaper Printer of the Year 2018

The Malayalam language daily has a number of local editions. This leads to frequent editorial changes plus localised editions which demand more plate changes in colour. This leads to tight scheduling in the production process. Despite this, the newspaper manages to maintain adherence to quality day in and day out.

Malayala Manorama has a circulation of 3,00,000 copies.

The newspaper is designed by an in-house team, with in-house editorial support. Standard specifications are available for fonts, style and margin. The newspaper maintains a design style book.

The editorial system is on smart flow. The pages are designed on Adobe InDesign and page pairing is done on postRIP. The newspaper uses Agfa and Dotline CTPs while pre-flighting is done using Asura and Enfocus tools.

The newspaper is printed on Mitsubishi DiamondSpirit and Smartline presses. All have 4x1 configurations running at the speed of 70,000 iph.

In post-press, the gripper conveyor is from Muller Martini while the strapper and wrapper are from Transpak and Sitma respectively.

The four-colour newspaper is printed on Kondopoga or Tasman 41.5gsm newsprint.

The shortlisted companies in this category were

Dainik Divya Marathi (Aurangabad)

Hind Samachar

Jagran Prakashan

Punjab Kesari

Rajasthan Patrika