Newspaper & Mailroom
European Newspaper Awards for De Tijd and Trouw
Tuesday 27. November 2012 - Award-winning KBA Cortina quality at EPC in Lokeren
De Tijd financial daily has been crowned European Newspaper of the Year by the judges of the 14th European Newspaper Awards and is printed on a compact KBA Cortina web press by the Belgian printing house EPC.
This year there are two winners in the category national newspaper. The main prize was also awarded to the Dutch newspaper Trouw for its high-quality weekend supplements in magazine format also produced in waterless offset at EPC in Lokeren, Belgium. Conception and the visual appearance of the printed products are a focus of the European Newspaper Awards. It aims at facilitating the sharing of information about the conception and design of newspapers throughout Europe.
Wim Maes, director of Eco Print Cent (EPC) in Lokeren says: “It is a great honour for our printing house that not one but two of the printed products we produce won the main prize at the largest newspaper awards in Europe. Waterless coldset printing on the KBA Cortina is the ideal solution for high print quality, economic viability and sustainability necessary in today’s world. Moreover, the KBA Cortina with its unique capability to print without ink changes in coldset and heatset, paves the way for new business opportunities and ensures a higher level of utilisation.”
With its headquarters in Brussels the modern and reader-friendly financial daily, De Tijd, is published in Flemish. The newspaper was successfully re-launched in March 2012 with a switch from Nordic to Berliner format. It has since then been produced at EPC in Lokeren. Circulation has risen from 36,000 in 2010 to 39,000 copies in 2012. The judges described the paper as “particularly innovative” saying: “De Tijd uses visual storytelling – telling stories with visual tools- and, along with its headlines and texts, creates a unique information sphere.”
The Dutch tabloid Trouw has a circulation of 105,000 copies and headquarters in Amsterdam. Along with the classic sections devoted to national news, the newspaper has many stitched supplements. In 2012, two further magazine-like inserts were developed, which are printed by EPC in Lokeren: “letter & geest” (letter and mind) with the subheading “For readers and thinkers” and “tijd” (time) which looks at everyday topics in greater depth. The judges said: “Trouw uses this concept to expand the range of daily newspapers away from simply representing daily news towards a more intellectual audience. It creates a kind of daily weekly-newspaper.”
A total of 232 newspapers from 25 countries took part in the competition. There were eleven judges, among them journalists, scientists and designers from eight countries. The award ceremony will take place during the “European Newspaper Congress 2013” on 6 – 7 May 2013 in Vienna. It is organised by the newspaper designer Norbert Küpper as well as the people behind the journalist magazines Medium Magazine (Medium Magazin), Austrian Journalist (Österreichischer Journalist) and Swiss Journalist (Schweizer Journalist).