Océ and its print and distribution partners will be printing thousands of copies of 12 internationally renowned newspapers – including The Sydney Morning Herald for the duration of the Athens Olympic Games (August 13-29). Visitors and athletes in Athens will see fresh news in their home newspapers, in some cases before the people at home are even awake, digitally printed in small volumes but retaining the traditional look and feel of conventional newspapers.
Océ DNN, together with its partners Delta Singular Outsourcing Services (DSO), ComPage, and the Hellenic Distribution Agency will ensure the quality of production and delivery to key distribution nodes at Olympic venues, including the International Broadcasting Centre and International Media Centre in the Olympic Village.
Océ DNN is printing newspapers from several continents: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, Financial Times, Aftenposten, De Volkskrant, Sydney Morning Herald, Sing Tao from Hong Kong, Asahi Shimbun from Japan, Times of India, Corriere della Sera, and La Gazzetta dello Sport.
Once editorial and advertising pages are completed, the publishers send their ready-to-print digital templates in a PDF file to the Océ data centre in Poing, near Munich. From there, the data is routed within minutes via a secure network to DSO. The service provider produces the newspapers with an Océ Newspaper System 7000 that will be used specifically for the Olympic Games. This system can also be used for low-cost production of short press runs, and delivers 1,000 24-page newspapers per hour, all with look and feel the same as the conventional versions.
Several of the newspaper publishers are taking advantage of the possibilities that digital production allows to carry out innovative marketing ideas. The Sydney Morning Herald, will carry special advertisements in the digital version with good luck messages to Australian competitors.
Meanwhile, Japan’s Asahi Shimbun will produce a special Olympic supplement purely for the Athens edition, and will also be printing further copies digitally at Océ’s London printing site, which will be supplied to Japanese airlines flying out of Europe to Japan.
“The world-class reputation and expertise of Océ DNN for successfully delivering these digital newspaper projects has been vital in attracting so many top newspaper names”, says Tim Venediger, who heads up Océ DNN. “Today we have gone live with our most ambitious plan yet, and we look forward to providing the highest possible quality service for our publishing clients throughout these Olympic Games”.
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