The company also said that the improvement in quality following the installation has contributed to the increased circulation and readership.

"Until the installation of the Quadtech systems, we were measuring colour and colour register manually,” S Balasubramanian Adityan, director, Daily Thanthi, said. “The biggest challenge came when the number of coloured pages increased. It was difficult for operators to control register on our high-speed, double width and double circumference presses.”

Adityan said the Quadtech systems benefited the newspaper in five ways. “We can now shorten make-ready times, reduce startup waste, achieve consistent colour, and optimise labour and press usage, while contributing towards a better product and increased readership,” he said.

Recently, the technology was installed at four of Daily Thanthi’s plants in Cuddalore, Coimbatore, Tirunelveli and Nagercoil, in Tamil Nadu. Two additional Quadtech systems have been in operation at the group's headquarters in Chennai since 2010-11.

“Since installing the systems, we have seen a 20% reduction in the time taken to achieve good register, and a 10% reduction in waste. Our ability to maintain consistent colour throughout the run has also increased, giving us better overall quality,” said Adityan. “We used to face a challenge after each auto-pasting cycle, with variations in register, but that has been completely eliminated.”

The Quadtech Register Guidance System with MultiCam offers unmatched colour-register performance with operational flexibility. With lateral and circumferential register control, MultiCam searches marks as small as 0.36mm (0.014in) up to 30 times per second, even during make-ready and upsets in web tension. The Quadtech Ribbon Control System with MultiCam provides a high level of ribbon control tasks including cut-off, print-to-cut, print-to-fold and crossover register.

“The Daily Thanthi Group has been carrying out an investment program, renewing its press and ancillary technologies in its print centres. This has contributed not only to better print quality but also to a notable increase in the paper's circulation,” said Vinodhkumar Balakrishnan, regional sales manager, Quadtech.

Established in 1942, with a mission to educate and create awareness among all sections of the Tamil community, Daily Thanthi, today, is a full-colour broadsheet newspaper printed in 16 locations, with a circulation of more than 1.5 million and an estimated readership in excess of seven million.