Laurel Brunner reports from Ifra, the year’s biggest newspaper conference, which has just taken place in Amsterdam
The digital order of the day was fluid workflows, with XML and database-fuelled content-independence, data flowing across media and channel neutrality.Today’s newspaper is indeed a fluid creation, available in print, on the web, and increasingly, on mobile devices. These developments were all on show at Ifra but it is increasingly clear that it is applications that drive technology development, rather than production efficiencies demanding it. Newspapers have responded to falling circulations by inventing new content-based products based on digital media and by making the product creation process as efficient and automated as possible. Content management systems are at heart clever combinations of database technology and XML, with a dash of Web 2.0 thrown in.
Web 2.0 is a conceptual definition that covers all manner of technologies that support the idea of the network as a platform. The basics include server-supporting client applications, standard messaging techniques, content syndication plus browsers with plug-ins and extensions. The platform is fluid and can be configured to support all sorts of interesting business applications, from social networking à la Facebook, through to content development. For advertising Web 2.0 is an especially powerful platform for new business models, as the old space-based model is struggling to maintain its position in the face of new digitally driven competition.
Fortunately newspapers no longer have to buy everything from a single supplier. Roxen and Escenic are two examples of developers with strong web knowledge, who work closely with front end system developers to build cooperative systems
DTI is making progress with its Liquid Media technology that it acquired last year. It has announced that Madsack in Germany is to install the complete DTI Editorial which includes DTI’s Liquid Media for multichannel publishing, at 35 titles supporting over 1000 users.
Tera is another of the major front end system players, heading for the exciting multichannel rapids. Last year the company previewed its Content Management Service Architecture (CMSA) and this year presented the end result. Tera’s CMSA defines a content infrastructure for managing data regardless of its format or output path.
Quark is continuing to grow in gravitas, distancing its corporate self from the Quark of yore. At Ifra, the company announced QPS 8, which through XTensions can support both or either XPress 8 and Indesign in a single workflow system.
Agfa has updated its Arkitex technology with a version for the new Advantage N platesetter called Arkitex Essential. This entry level package has a constrained feature set, optimised for Advantage N target customers. Arkitex Vantage 1.2 adds multi-site support and third party systems monitoring for proactive real time health monitoring of a system. Agfa’s Intellitune 1.2 automated image processing now has an interface to front end systems from CCI, Atex and others.
Computer-to-Plate
Technologies inevitably keep improving and computer-to-plate is no exception. At Ifra we had a few new CTP plates and Agfa introduced a new engine developed in collaboration with Strobbe. Over 1200 of Agfa’s 2000+ engines in the newspaper market are violet. Agfa’s latest Advantage N platesetter is designed for newspaper and commercial applications. Its design is based on the Polaris, however, this is not a reworking of old technology.
Designed and manufactured in cooperation with Punch Grafix, the Advantage N images with 120 mW violet diodes with completely new optics using a cylindrical mirror to guarantee slow scan registration. Designed for greater imaging quality and reliability, the new optics can zoom and so can support any spot size. There are four models ranging in automation from the basic manual Advantage N-M and up.
Krause introduced the LS Jet 350, the latest in its highly successful LS Jet series. The LS Jet 350 images with a 160 mW violet laser and has a faster polygon, and a quicker data interface. It images up to 350pph at resolutions from 1,200 to 1,270 dpi.
Following its introduction at drupa, Kodak’s Generation News thermal platesetter is now available. Kodak also said that it is working on a new processless plate for newspapers for introduction in 2009, based on its PF-N technology. PF-N is a processless thermal plate for newspapers currently developed on press.
Plates
Agfa’s successor to its 91V is the N-92V. It has a run length of 350,000 and improved resolution so it’s also suitable for commercial work. The N-92VCF is a chemistry-free version of this plate suitable for up to 200,000 impressions and moderate rather than unlimited throughput requirements. This plate is in use at La Presse de la Manche in France and a couple of other sites. Agfa is expanding sales in January when full manufacturing gets underway.
The environment is key to Fujifilm’s strategy, so the company is actively developing processless and chemistry-free plates. As expected, Fujifilm introduced its chemistry-free violet plate for newspapers, and rather unexpectedly a new thermal plate for newspapers. The Brillia Pro-VN is a version of the violet Pro V plate. It uses high sensitivity polymerisation technology for similar productivity as conventional processed violet plates, but for newspaper applications. Pro VN has the same sensitivity and productivity as Fujifilm’s conventional newspaper plate, the LP-NNW.
The new Pro-VN was shown being imaged on the FFEI Alinte News930 and the Krause LS-JET 350 platesetters. Pro VN is good for up to 200,000 impressions and is compatible with visible light platesetters and the protector fluid for most European plate processors. There are three European beta sites which are expected to have gone live after Ifra. Commercial availability of the Pro VN is in 2009 and the plate is manufactured in Tilburg.
Fujiflm also rather surprised its competition with the introduction of a new thermal plate for newspapers. Fujifilm has developed a new UV ink-tolerant thermal plate for newspapers in line with customer demand. The Brillia LH-NN2 is a second generation thermal plate based on the LH-NN. It is more stable and reliable in processing, with around 30 per cent increased sensitivity. Run length is up to 300,000 and beta trials will be underway at the Nuremberger Nachrichten and other sites in January. Commercial availability is expected to be by the end of the first quarter 2009. Kodak needs to get on with this as processless plates are rising up many newspapers’ agendas, because of the cost savings they afford and the need to improve the newspaper’s green credentials for advertisers and readers. Kodak had no further news on plates but is expected to announce a cooperation with PrintCity shortly for its Ultra Wide Web project (see below).
Digital Newsprint
It’s been a painfully slow business but we are starting to see a glimmer of progress in digital newsprint. Two important installations, Agfa’s VASP installation in Portugal and Screen’s sale of the Truepress Jet520 to Newsworld Corporation, were presented at Ifra. The Truepress Jet520 will be installed at AlphaGraphics in New Jersey, to print the Daily Mail and Mail On Sunday for the New York area starting in January 2009. The press and a dedicated Hunkeler finishing system will be installed at AlphaGraphics’ facilities next month.
VASP is a newspaper distributor which has installed a Dotrix DGNews digital press to support roaming readers. This includes travellers, expatriates, immigrants in large centres of population and remote areas. The press can also produce newspapers for remote small communities or be used to trial new publications, for example, print runs of less than 5,000 daily. The Dotrix DGNews inkjet has a Xaar greyscale head and uses UV ink to print on 48gsm newsprint. Agfa has standardised on this paper rather than 45gsm because of the added process latitude it gives them, however, it adds to a newspaper’s costs. The Dotrix DGNews prints a 63cm width and speed is rising to an anticipated 32 metres per minute by next year with complete finishing. VASP has been printing newspapers on this press since August with the press running for 10 hours per night.
VASP focuses on broadsheets for its local market which also includes Brazil’s national daily, El Globo. This is an interesting business model which could make considerable sense. Newspaper distributors face rather less risk with an investment into a digital press than the newspaper publishers do: there’s no investment in copies that might not sell, the distributors control their own stocks, they can offer what they like to local readers and control costs better.
Digital newsprint is also better for the environment because it simplifies logistics and far less transport is required, although printing with UV inks isn’t particularly green. VASP’s business model has considerable scope for growth and the company is building agreements with more publishers to print their titles on a revenue sharing basis. Agfa says that it needs to sell ten machines per year to sustain itself in the digital newsprint business. One down, nine to go.
According to Bertrand Decoux, managing director of Kodak for Europe and Africa, CTP is still the top priority for Kodak’s Ifra visitors, but nonetheless the company is also talking to distributors of newspapers as well as newspaper publishers. The digital inkjet Stream’s introduction has been brought forward by six months for introduction early in 2010. Kodak says this is because of high interest from the market. Most of the brainwork has been done and Kodak is now working ‘to bring the printhead to be live and to be where we want it to be’.
The Creo Print on Demand Solutions Group is working on a dedicated APPE 2.0-based front end for Stream in tandem with Intimate, a Danish developer of IPDS software which Kodak recently acquired. Kodak’s biggest challenge, and that of its competitors such as Xerox, HP and Océ, is to prepare the market for these seriously high throughput digital presses. We expect 2009 to be the year for this as developers start to target printers and print buyers to work on cooperative application development. For Kodak, its Unified Workflow will be the starting point for crossmedia production companies, managing output to Nexpress and Stream, or to plate.
