But print capacity has
increased by at least six to ten times
One might well ask, how
can the above statement could be true? However, if one looks closely
at the Indian print industry over the years and researches it as
intensely as IppStar has for the past fifteen years, it is not too
complex to explain.
First of all, you have to
quadruple capacity to print 4-color process versus black and white or
monochrome printing. Indians love high quality color media although
we are by no means unique in this need for all media to more and more
closely resemble reality. We love cinema and television and we loved
to make videos of family occasions and marriages till we discovered
high quality color photo albums printed digitally. We are hungry for
color reproduction right from our religious calendars and posters to
the large color advertising billboards. Quite naturally our
newspapers lead the world in color content and pages and our book
printing is also going in this direction. Thus while not all print is
completely in color, this tendency has meant that a substantial
number of single presses have been replaced by 4-color machines.
New technology has then
doubled productivity. The advent of inexpensive digital cameras and
computers that are able to create a huge amount of color content
drives the use of computer to plate and modern machines. A single
color machine that effectively produced 5,000 sheets an hour in each
color (with clean-ups for subsequent color and makereadies) has been
replaced by a 4-color machine using punched CtP plates in perfect
register and effectively producing at least 10,000 sheets an hour.
Bear in mind that India was a land of second-hand single color
machines that now has a huge number of brand new and automated
4-color presses.
If you are a smart
printer, you already know what I am talking about. And I have not
even mentioned the growth of the top twenty printers in the country
who run 6 and 7-color presses automated presses with UV curing and
coaters. These machines have to be run at 13,000 sheets an hour if
they are to be paid for and they effectively double the capacity for
value addition of a new 4-color press running at 10,000 sheets an
hour. It is another matter that this increased value may not yet be
realized by all of them.
Need versus demand
Indian
printers have been, on the whole, fortunate to ride a booming economy
since 1991. But they have not really grown that much more than the
economy itself and the imperatives of growth are such that if you are
successful in terms of quality and marketing, you cannot really avoid
creating huge capacity. If you are a successful innovator or a good
user of new technology, you cannot help but want to become the best
in the world, and some of the Indian printers have done just that.
Thus
although there is a great need for increase of Indian print
especially in education, it has not yet been turned into demand
because of the poor implementation and refinement of the country’s
educational policies. Until demand catches up, which it will, our
best commercial printers will have to rely on exporting print. They
are very good at this and I am betting on our printers becoming the
leading and most respected print exporters in the world.
Naresh
Khanna from the edit-blog page of May 2014 issue Indian Printer
and Publisher
