Sudeep Bhattacharjee, manroland India speaks about manroland’s new focus areas and changing trends in the newspapers market.
“Digital media doesn’t seem to be a reason for panic right now and there is still a lot of space for newspapers to grow,” observed Sudeep Bhattacharjee, manroland India during an exclusive talk with PRESSIdeas at PrintPack India 2017.
Newspaper market in India
“I have been talking to a lot of people coming to the show. People of smaller towns told that there is no electricity. The mobile phone use figures in the country largely don’t represent the smartphones which are the actual means of digitalization or turning users into digital media consumers,” he explains. In the so called Digital wave, although mobile phone penetration is quoted as big percentage of Indian population, only a marginal number there owns smartphones. So, Digitalization will take a lot of time to catch up with print media especially newspapers. Similarly, in larger towns and cities, consolidations are taking place in almost every sphere. Even big players, though not at the same pace as earlier, are looking at expansion. However, it’s unlike the US or European markets where newspapers have seen a significant fall.
In India if we look at the newspaper market last year, there has been growth but there have been lot of consolidations. A lot of people have been looking at their operations and considering the profitability and viability of their units etc.
manroland plans to answer changing trends
manroland recently devised a strategy in their European markets concerning its different businesses including newspapers, commercial, web offset, accessories and consumables etc. They also observed that though the Packaging market is growing, the overall market for new equipment sale in Web Offset has shrunk. Apart from these, the Services industry is not only growing, but it is now the larger part of the industry’s business. The strategy got devised around this aspect and manroland have adopted various models in the Service sphere. “Today we can’t say that we are interested only in selling new equipments. We are also looking into areas like accessories, modular solutions, upgrade for existing set-ups, workflows and a lot more,” says Sudeep.
Incidentally, manroland India has been behind the recent idea of selling Automatic Registration System for existing presses of manroland as well as other brands. It took off in Indian market and is likely to be up for following in the European and other markets. Similarly, manroland is providing its other popular solutions like Density Control System and the PECOM System. “Another thing that is very popular in the US and Europe is, equipping presses of any make with Press Management System from manroland. So, when we say, newspaper market is going down, we say it about new equipment. We don’t say it about Service space. The business prospects in Services can be termed as disruptive business. For example, we have Auto Registration, Blanket Wash, Print Management and many such solutions already in our stable. What we are doing today is trying to modify our design a bit to fit existing machines and equipments. Similarly, we are looking at upgrading our Store. We have an altogether new Online Store for enhanced user experience,” continues Sudeep.
The retrofit of the PECOM system ensures press availability. Besides the operators and other employees are offered new processes that lighten their workloads. Obviously, they get benefitted from new functions such as the PECOM Press-Manager (PPM) for the realtime capture and evaluation of production data. Automation aids such as the Autocycle function for image refinement, Waste Detection Control for separating out waste, and error message visualization are also available. Overall production stability is increased via a secure power supply, high-performance computing, and modern data storage and an integrated backup system which can be switched over fast and reliably via USB Dongle. Various benefits include: Integration of the PressMonitor; energy saving Control Console System; and Integrated backup system.
Affordable solution for perfect ink density
A no-holds-barred commitment to quality for cost-sensitive projects: IDCm ink density control employs a traversing module to measure real-time ink density values. As an inexpensive upgrade for existing commercial presses, IDCm achieves the tried and tested measurement quality of Inline Control systems from manroland web systems. InlineDensity Control (IDC) controls ink density based on colour marks in a print control strip. Unlike the stationary cameras used for IDC, the IDCm (motorized) model uses traversing measurement modules.
IDCm can be fully integrated in the PECOM-X environment or used as a stand-alone solution. The latter variant can be used for easy retrofits on existing equipment, since it requires no software changes, for example on the press control console. All variants of IDCm achieve high process stability and save material and manpower. This is ensured by ultra-precise density measurement with standardized illumination and polarizing filters.
The low-maintenance IDCm is available for all web widths.
Making Presses more intelligent
Another thing manroland is looking at is how to make printing presses more intelligent. They are not only putting advanced control equipments and management systems but also putting data to optimum use so as to facilitate more predictive maintenance. Of course, it is backed by manroland expert support and engineering services.
Nevertheless, the basic business for manroland is very much there with machines and equipments being provided to customers in every part of the globe. “Our basic business goes by the slogan – ‘The Last Man Standing’. This slogan has made us not only depend on our equipment business but also to keep changing with time,” emphasizes Sudeep.
The last but not the least is the manroland consumables business under printcom. manroland head office has left this business to each market organization. printcom supplies customers with extensively tested, certified and process-compliant system components to further refine and optimise their printing systems. The products offered under printcom are Blankets, Coatings, Fountain Solutions, Lubricants, Printing Inks, Rollers, Silicones, Washes and Special Chemistry.
