Océ has notched up some success, in Europe at least. It has gained a foothold in the newspaper market in Spain, with the installation of JetStream 2200 inkjet web presses at Imcodavila, outside Madrid, and at UK digital print firm Stroma. The Dutch manufacturer has registered some market penetration in niche areas, and has pitched a strong technology case for nearly a decade, but the fact is the wider newspaper industry hasn’t been buying the story. This hasn’t stopped hardware vendors from making their pitch that digital print offers newspaper publishers new markets and business models to expand their reach and circulations, and create new relationships with readers.
Océ is undoubtedly the frontrunner in the market Its Digital Newspaper Network (DNN) worldwide utilises the facilities of printers, including Imcodavila and Stroma, to print and distribute copies of a large selection of newspapers to hotels, cruise ships, upper level airline passengers and the like. The premise is that readers like to receive printed versions of their local newspaper anywhere in the world; print on demand can turn that into reality.
Herbert Kieleithner, national marketing manager for production printing at Océ Australia, is convinced of the power of digital for the newspaper industry.
“I’m a great believer that with the availability of high-powered, full-colour inkjet systems, such as Océ’s JetStream, the opportunity is there for digital newspaper production. Before inkjet systems became available, one could not produce enough papers in the short production window to make it feasible. Now with a dual system, like a JetStream 3300, 30-inch web width, you can produce more than 50,000 papers within a four- to six-hour production window.”
Océ announced in January that Stroma, the first member of its DNN, can now print colour editions of international newspapers in London using its JetStream. The printer claims quality is comparable to traditional newspapers and will allow publishers to expand colour production.
Stroma managing director Steve Brown says: “Digital colour is a real expansion opportunity for newspapers. This is something the publishers have been wanting for a long time, and will now be realised. Additional publishers are waiting to start printing in London now that colour is available.”
Global network
Another firm working in this space is Newspaper Direct. It was founded in 2001 to take the concept of same-day newspapers around the world in similar fashion to Océ’s DNN. Available in more than 100 countries through a global network of distributors, Newspaper Direct’s print-on-demand service is designed for individual subscribers, retail outlets, hotels, cruise ships, airlines, corporate offices, libraries, educational institutions, events and private yachts. It has an extensive list of publications available, including most of Australia’s dailies and many regional newspapers, as well as magazines.
Speaking from the company’s headquarters in Vancouver, Nikolay Malyarov, vice-president of publishing, told ProPrint the company’s business model had evolved to include online availability of its publications.
“Things have been changing over the years. The company was founded purely on the printed product, but in 2003 we ventured into the online world. In volumes, the print business has continued to grow over the years, but at a much slower pace than the online business.”
“The pay-for-print medium will exist for the foreseeable future. There will always be someone who wants the printed edition of their favourite newspaper.”
Océ Australia has promoted the concept to the local newspaper industry for years. It has done presentations at events like PacPrint 2009. At the annual conference of the Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers’ Association, PANPA 2010, Océ was talking up “Australia’s first individualised newspaper”, the 16pp PANPA Digital Daily (although printing was actually done at its headquarters in Munich). Nevertheless, it was personalised for content, advertising and the recipients’ details, and was considered a successful experiment by Panpa chief executive Mark Hollands.
Océ’s Kieleithner says there have been successful digital newspaper projects run out Australia. “We have SEMA [formerly Security Mail] in Sydney, which has produced newspapers on a daily basis for the past six years. Their clients are from Japan and the US. Other companies include Fairfax and News Limited, which have several of their papers printed internationally using the Océ Digital Newspaper Network in London, Los Angeles, New York and Singapore.
“Some of the papers printed in Australia are financial papers and are delivered to subscribers, such as the Nikkei, for instance. In other cases overseas, it is for subscribers, newsstands or delivered to airlines for premium clients. For instance Qantas, out of Heathrow, offers Business and First Class passengers tomorrow’s paper, literally. There are also businesses that offer reprints from archives for special anniversaries or other events.”
Other digital print manufacturers have eyed the newspaper market, but have yet to make serious moves, although they do have technology to fit the requirements. Local vendors are now cautiously eyeing the market for its potential.
Kodak Australia managing director Adrian Fleming says: “Kodak has spent a number of years developing high-speed, colour inkjet technology to address all markets – transactional, commercial print, data-driven and newspaper printing. Kodak is continually working with paper mills to test stocks and has launched a dedicated newspaper press, the Versamark VL 4200, to meet the specific demands of newspaper printing.
“Australia is in a unique situation, having a largely multicultural population over a vast geography looking for a wide range of international and local publications. The biggest opportunity for digitally printed newspapers in Australia is the reduction in distribution costs, including transportation, supply chain, waste reduction and environmental impact. Digitally printed newspapers also offer the opportunity to provide personalised content and regionalised publications with cost-effective smaller print runs.”
Remote regions
Peter Scott, northern region manager at Screen, says that in New Zealand, Screen Truepress Jet 520 user Astra Printing has expressed interest in extending from books into the newspaper sector.
“Astra foresees the possibility of remote printing of titles along the length of the two islands, given the vast distances between populated areas. This model would also work in states such as Western Australia and Queensland,” says Scott.
“We believe the first opportunity [here] is remote printing of titles currently air freighted at considerable cost. This would be to areas such as far north Western Australia, the Northern Territory and far north Queensland, and the printing of international titles near major tourist areas. In Dubai, Screen has a successful Truepress Jet 520 customer that prints UK and other European newspaper titles for the UAE’s expatriate communities. These are sometimes available in the UAE before UK readers see them. They sell for a premium price and are much in demand.”
Shane Lucas, director of HP Graphic Arts South Pacific, says the company had not previously focused on newspapers, but that may change with technology developments. He says that while it hasn’t been a focus in the past, that is changing with the advent of products such as the HP Indigo W7200 as well as inkjet high-speed production systems, the T200, T300 and T350.
“The development of high-speed inkjet production systems was initially around newspapers and Australia is a perfect market, as we have a diverse population geographically and demographically. So you could have very short-run bespoke papers for Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean markets etc. That market is reasonably unique to Australia because anywhere else these ethnic groups have large enough populations to warrant conventional production, as print runs are sufficient.”
PANPA chief executive Mark Hollands brings another perspective to the question and one that strikes closer to the centre of their possibilities.
“There are a lot of newspapers here and especially in New Zealand, that are under 5,000 copies. We all know how much paper and waste you get on a web press to produce 5,000 copies. We all know the economics of that,” says Hollands.
“And then there’s colour and paper. Digital presses will come more into their own in time, and for smaller newspapers there is potential. I also think it has the potential to bring out new publishers, as digital printing becomes more efficient and lowers its costs, whereas web printing can’t do that.”
Hollands points out one reason why the newspaper market hasn’t been as quick to switch onto digital printing as the vendors would like – and the vendors themselves have to carry some of the responsibility.
“The suppliers are doing themselves no favours at the moment because they’re having the wrong conversations with the wrong people. They need to go to the business development managers and marketing managers, and keep pushing. The product [digitally printed newspapers] is a sales and marketing tool at this point in time. It can turn into a circulation tool but that’s way down the track. Right now, it is about opening up new markets, building new relationships, creating new business models. That’s what digital printing is about. It’s not about printing.
“The printing fraternity doesn’t get that. [Newspaper publishers] are not going to have a photocopier that’s bigger than Ben Hur. [Digital print vendors’] sales model and their pricing model are shades of photocopying. I’m not saying it’s a bad business model, I’m just saying you struggle to make a conversation with a printer in that environment.
“So it’s really about marketing people. It’s about visionary editors. Not many editors would grasp this and think it’s their problem. So the conversation is going to the wrong people at the moment.”
The iPad effect
And what of the elephant in the room – the undeniable move to online news content? What of Murdoch’s launch of The Daily, News Ltd’s iPad newspaper? Surely it is only the first of many such projects.
Stephen Browning, director of corporate affairs, digital media, at News Ltd, told ProPrint that the company’s focus is on readers – “what they want, how they want it, when they want it”. Unfortunately for those promoting the idea of digitally printed newspapers, News Ltd sees a brighter future in online applications, which can only grow with time, rather than digital print, although he doesn’t dismiss it outright.
“We’re platform-agnostic. We want to get our content wherever people want to read it, but when you have the direct relationship with your customers, that’s much more powerful and beneficial to us,” says Browning. “For us, the number of people printing on demand through these systems is miniscule. We do have a number of subscribers who read our papers through Newspaper Direct, but at the moment the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) does not recognise these sales as part of official circulation figures.
“From a publisher’s perspective, there isn’t a great deal of upside in aggressively promoting these services because they don’t count as circulation. At the moment, we are in discussions with the ABC about this and also, of course, a much bigger issue, which is the counting of digital subscriptions on devices such as the iPad, and making sure they are covered in ABC auditing.”
Newspaper Direct’s Malyarov agrees that in some markets, circulation audits, or the lack thereof, are a hindrance to his business development for both online and printed digital newspapers.
“We have the same problem in the old world. Not all the countries, but Germany in particular is notoriously slow and very conservative when it comes to recognising new technology in the publishing industry. I think the Australian ABC is behind the times. We’ve had meetings with the ABC and publishers and the ABC is holding us back. It took them so long to come up with any kind of recognition of digital editions,” he says.
Browning points to The Daily as one future model for the company. “I’m aware of Newspaper Direct, and my understanding of it is that it’s a fairly niche market. There is a much, much bigger market reading newspapers digitally online, and there’s an emerging market coming through tablets – obviously the iPad and the Android tablets that are coming, and that’s certainly where News Ltd and News Corporation in the States [are looking]. You may be aware that News Corporation is going to launch the world’s first iPad-only newspaper, The Daily, on 1 February, so obviously that’s where we are concentrating in that area, rather than in digitally printed newspapers.
“Digital editions through Newspaper Direct and other services are not a big part of business for us at the moment, and certainly are unlikely to be while they’re not being audited by the ABC. Even if the ABC did start to audit, say, Newspaper Direct, I do think that possibly they will be overtaken before they really get going, particularly by tablets.”
PANPA’s Hollands adds: “One could say that this is technology looking for a problem to solve, rather than technology solving a problem that already exists”.
But the last word goes to Manroland managing director Steve Dunwell. While he was at the manufacturer’s German HQ in late January, Dunwell also visited new strategic partner Océ. He was involved in discussions between manroland development engineers and Océ executives about significant developments in Manroland folder applications with Océ webfed inkjet presses.
“I can tell you that there are people definitely interested in inkjet digital newspapers. There is also interest in it in Australia,” he says. “The cost model has to be correct, as well as the stock it can run on – and it can be. I believe that with Manroland’s strategic alliance with Océ, and with some of our folder developments that will sit on the end of a webfed inkjet press, it will be of significant interest.
“And there will certainly be Australian interest in those developments,” he adds. “The cost model that people have been coming up with [for digitally printed newspapers] has not really been correct. The cost model has to be correct, but with this folder on the end of an inkjet press it is going to be material for newspaper publishers. I am certainly excited by what I’ve seen, and I believe we can have a solution for newspapers.”
Personalisation offset-digital hybrids
The idea of personalising newspapers isn’t new, and there are other ways of doing it, according to Kodak and Manroland.
Kodak Australasia managing director Adrian Fleming says: “Kodak offers a series of digital print heads, the Kodak S5, S10 and S20, which when fitted to existing offset presses, allow variable data printing and personalisation of printed documents.”
Manroland Australasia managing director Steve Dunwell agrees there is real potential in this concept. In fact, he was in Germany in late January investigating several new developments of interest to newspaper publishers and printers.
“We’re talking to several customers with web presses. We’re doing it [adding inkjet printheads] at Axel Springer, which at the moment is basically just black-and-white, but they’re now looking at four-colour applications, and for change of address and marketing type applications such as special promotions,” he said.
“You need to look at cost justifications for the print heads from a production standpoint, and then the marketing opportunities for the newspapers, which add another justification to it. My view is that generally, they will justify it with production benefits, to save having to run the press down and change plates, and then once they’ve got the print heads the opportunities for the newspapers, from a marketing perspective, will open up.”
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