Business News

State of the art for the news publishing industry at IFRA Expo 2010 in Hamburg

Thursday 19. August 2010 - IFRA Expo 2010, from 4 to 6 October in Hamburg, Germany, is an event not to be missed by decision-makers in the news publishing industry. Despite all the hype surrounding the iPad, Android and other innovations, the core business of publishing houses - print - will play an outstanding role at IFRA Expo.

The WAN-IFRA experts have analysed product trends and give an overview on the website http://www.ifraexpo.com of the latest offerings scheduled to be unveiled at IFRA Expo.

The most important manufacturers and suppliers will be represented at IFRA Expo 2010. To date, a total of about 300 exhibitors from more than 30 countries have booked some 10,500 m² exhibition floor space in Hamburg. An updated list of exhibitors is available under http://www.ifraexpo.com . Among the major exhibitors in halls A3 and A4 (Prepress, Printing and Finishing) are:
ABB, AbitibiBowater, Agfa, Baldwin, BARENSCHEE, Felix Böttcher, EAE, Elettra, Ernst Marks, Experts Team, Ferag, Fujifilm Europe, Goss, Grafikontrol, Holmen Paper, IE Graphic Engineering, Ingenieurbüro Mauser, Kodak, Koenig & Bauer, Krause-Biagosch, manroland, Müller Martini, NELA, Océ, Papierfabrik Palm, ppi Media, Q.I. Press Controls, RIMA-SYSTEM, Scholpp Montage, Schur, Siemens, Sitech Systems, SITMA, Stora Enso, technotrans, Tensor, Tolerans, UPM-Kymmene, VEGRA and WIFAG.

The four Focus Sessions represent an ideal complement to a visit to the Expo. The up-to-the-minute, print-related topics dealt with are:
– Creative Mailroom (Monday, 4. October, 14 .00 h),
– Latest Production Trends (Tuesday, 5 October, 10.00 h),
– Green Publishing (Tuesday, 5 October, 14.00 h),and
– Excellence in Printing (Wednesday, 6 October, 10.00 h).

Confirmed speakers include:
– Marco Castellaneta, CSR Delegate, Member of the Executive Board, Ringier AG, Switzerland;
– George Donaldson, Group Continuous Improvement Manager, Newsprinters, United Kingdom;
– Thomas Drensek, Operations Manager, Offset Printing Plant, Hamburg-Ahrensburg, Axel Springer AG, Germany;
– Teruo Fujita, President, Shizuoka Shimbun Printing, Japan;
– Michael O’Brien, Production Manager, Webprint Concepts Limited, Ireland;
– Ronnie Poon, Vice President – Prepress and Commercial Printing, Singapore Press Holdings, Singapore.

More information is available at http://www.ifraexpo.com/focussessions .

Production-related topics play a major role also at the Media Port in hall A1: The “Innovative Advertising” Session (Wednesday, 6 October, 14.00 to 16.30 h) analyses new forms of advertising in print products and presents practical examples. Participation in the Media Port Sessions is free of charge for IFRA Expo visitors. The complete programme can be downloaded as a PDF at http://www.ifraexpo.com/mediaport .

In addition, at 18.00.h on Wednesday, 6 October, the new members of the International Newspaper Color Quality Club (INCQC) 2010-2012 will be presented and honoured at a ceremony held on the exhibition grounds (Foyer “Mitte”, upper floor). As announced already by the World Association of Newspapers and News Media (WAN-IFRA), 109 newspaper titles from 43 countries achieved membership in the INCQC and thus most prestigious commendation worldwide for newspaper printing quality. The competition, that has been held every two years since 1994, sets standards for reproduction and colour printing quality. Visit http://www.colorqualityclub.org for more information.

Roland Thees, Print Engineer and WAN-IFRA prepress and quality specialist, has the following to say about automation: “Cost pressure and rationalisation, combined with progressive IT solutions, permit the installation of an integrated prepress workflow that entails only minor manual intervention. The focus here is especially on online ad delivery, automated image optimisation and pre-flight checking of the completed pages. Softproofing on a monitor directly at the press, ideally of the RIPped, enables low-cost final checking.” Concerning ink saving, he adds: “Many systems suppliers of software products for editorial, image processing, prepress and RIPs or imaging systems respectively, have in their portfolio an application that allows the use of own ink savers or other manufacturer’s software.”

Beatrix Beckmann, WAN-IFRA materials expert, says about ecology and “green” printing: “Environment-friendly production begins with environmentally aware management. Examples of sustainable measures at printing operations are optimised ink utilisation and therefore minimum ink waste, plate recycling, paper recycling, use of environment-friendly materials, energy control systems for optimised power and heating consumption, the use of renewable energy, cutting emissions (e.g. by low-emission cleaning agents), environment-friendly transport solutions and optimised logistics. Therefore concrete “green” solutions are what to ask for at IFRA Expo.”

Moritz Schwarz, WAN-IFRA Senior Consultant, describes automatic reel management: “The trend towards reels that are larger (wider – for triple-wide presses – and of a larger diameter) reduces the required reel transport capacity. The use of a triple-wide press means that it is necessary to store two additional reel categories (5/6 and 6/6-wide reels) compared to double-width reels and consequently design the warehouse accordingly. The weight of the wider or thicker reels respectively (up to three tonnes) means that usually manual transport must be discontinued. All these aspects have to be taken into account when planning a printing operation. Besides for transport in the warehouse and day store, reel unwrapping and preparing can also be automated. These steps in the work process have been greatly simplified by the development of straight splicing and multi-function splicing tape that have been used successfully worldwide for some years.