Newspaper & Mailroom
Couldnt Make the Printing in Japan tour? Take the Virtual Trip
Friday 09. April 2010 - Three days, four cities, five printing plants and a paper mill - the WAN-IFRA Study Tour of Japan needed a bullet train to keep up with a packed schedule. If you were one of those who missed the trip, the study tour blog allows you to filter their findings at your own speed.
Taking the virtual tour means missing out on the bullet trains but not the bullet points. Find out first-hand how Japanese newspaper companies are dealing with demand including:
presses running at 100,000 copies an hour,
hybrid printing,
printing the worlds largest-circulation newspaper,
digital newspaper presses,
and much more.
The blog can be found at www.wan-ifra.org/blogs/japan_tour, with words and images provided by Manfred Werfel, WAN-IFRAs Executive Director of Newspaper Production, and Sergio de Oliveira, Senior Programme Manager, who guided the tour participants.
See the production executives visit, among others, the Yomiuri Shimbun, the worlds largest-circulation newspaper with more than 10 million copies for the morning edition alone. Think of it – 10 million copies every morning. Then follow the tour to Kyoto, where the Kyoto Shimbun relies on a TKS Century Press running at a speed of 100,000 copies an hour.
You will witness printing plants with production capacities reaching 2200 tons of newsprint consumption a day and the technical feats of newspapers like the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, which handles two daily editions totalling more than 4.5 million copies, 50 percent of the pages in full colour.
Of course theres more to any Study Tour than metal and paper. While you cant sip the saké online, you can still savour the flavour of the tour, including Mount Fuji, the buzz of Tokyo, and dining Japanese style.
WAN-IFRA offers a range of Study Tours, each with the goal of showcasing the best solutions from newspapers and media companies across the globe. For more details on upcoming tours, visit the WAN-IFRA events calendar (www.wan-ifra.org/events).
Still time for the Printing Summit
If all of this gives you an appetite for the way other professionals manage print, then take a look at the upcoming WAN-IFRA Printing Summit, which will take place in Salzburg, Austria from 13-15 April. There is still time to sign up or register on-site for this international event that also features two speakers from Japan.