In mid-July 2020, Meerut-based Arihant Publication India ordered the Impel-Welbound’s 16-station Signa gathering system, with offline stacking facility, in-feed into the perfect binder Freedom 4K, which is delivered on to a conveyor that could be linked to an inline trimmer. The company already had two six-clamp binders supplied by Impel-Welbound Group, in addition to a number of Muller Martini and Kolbus binding lines. The Signa gathering system was dispatched at the end of August 2020 .gallery-container { font-family: Arial; margin: 0; } .gallery-container * { box-sizing: border-box; } .gallery-container img { vertical-align: middle; } /* Position the image container (needed to position the left and right arrows) */ .gallery-sub-container { position: relative; } /* Hide the images by default */ .gallery-container .mySlides { display: none; } /* Add a pointer when hovering over the thumbnail images */ .gallery-container .cursor { cursor: pointer; } /* Next & previous buttons */ .gallery-container .prev, .gallery-container .next { cursor: pointer; position: absolute; top: 40%; width: auto; padding: 16px; margin-top: -50px; color: white; font-weight: bold; font-size: 20px; border-radius: 0 3px 3px 0; user-select: none; -webkit-user-select: none; } /* Position the "next button" to the right */ .gallery-container .next { right: 0; border-radius: 3px 0 0 3px; } /* On hover, add a black background color with a little bit see-through */ .gallery-container .prev:hover, .gallery-container .next:hover { background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); } /* Number text (1/3 etc) */ .gallery-container .numbertext { color: #f2f2f2; font-size: 12px; padding: 8px 12px; position: absolute; top: 0; } /* Container for image text */ .gallery-container .caption-container { text-align: center; background-color: #222; padding: 2px 16px; color: white; } .gallery-container .row:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } /* Six columns side by side */ .gallery-container .column { float: left; width: 16.66%; } /* Add a transparency effect for thumnbail images */ .gallery-container .demo { opacity: 0.6; } .gallery-container .active, .gallery-container .demo:hover { opacity: 1; } 1 / 27 2 / 27 3 / 27 4 / 27 5 / 27 6 / 27 7 / 27 8 / 27 9 / 27 10 / 27 11 / 27 12 / 27 13 / 27 14 / 27 15 / 27 16 / 27 17 / 27 18 / 27 19 / 27 20 / 27 21 / 27 22 / 27 23 / 27 24 / 27 25 / 27 26 / 27 27 / 27 ❮ ❯ var slideIndex = 1; showSlides(slideIndex); function plusSlides(n) { showSlides(slideIndex += n); } function currentSlide(n) { showSlides(slideIndex = n); } function showSlides(n) { var i; var slides = document.getElementsByClassName("mySlides"); var dots = document.getElementsByClassName("demo"); var captionText = document.getElementById("caption"); if (n > slides.length) {slideIndex = 1} if (n < 1) {slideIndex = slides.length} for (i = 0; i < slides.length; i++) { slides[i].style.display = "none"; } for (i = 0; i < dots.length; i++) { dots[i].className = dots[i].className.replace(" active", ""); } slides[slideIndex-1].style.display = "block"; dots[slideIndex-1].className += " active"; captionText.innerHTML = dots[slideIndex-1].alt; }

Parvesh Jain (r) with son Atishay (circled) Arihant currently publishes more than 3,000 titles Arihant: Meerut’s printer Parvesh Jain at Arihant, shares the highlights of the past 23 years with Ramu Ramanathan about how the firm is bullish about books Ramu Ramanathan (RR): Let’s begin with the genesis of Arihant’s journey in the heart of the publishing hub of Meerut, which is well known for educational publishing… Parvesh Jain (PJ): Arihant was established by my two brothers and I in 1997. While I oversee the complete printing operation, Deepesh and Reetesh look after content development and sales and finance respectively. RR: Arihant is probably one of the few publishers in the country, which publishes books in almost all the segments of education… PJ: Since our inception with a set of books for IIT JEE in 1997, Arihant currently publishes more than 3,000 titles for engineering, medical, competitive entrances, school curriculum, ITI, polytechnic and government recruitment examinations. RR: What has been the greatest achievement for Arihant thus far? PJ: Every year since 1997, Arihant has managed to venture into new segments in educational publishing. Now, in a short period, we spread our branches all across the country. During that time, printing was outsourced despite having our own book printing press in Meerut. RR: When did you think of consolidating the printing of your publications in different locations? PJ: In 2014, we moved to a 12-acre facility, which housed a factory that could compete with the biggest of book-printers in India. All the capacity that we built up is being used for our publications. RR: Arihant has invested in multiple webs. How did you plan your binding to cope with the bottleneck in post-press? PJ: The binding in our press was initially dominated by the single- and six-clamp binders, and an occasional offline high speed machine. It took some time to graduate to complete in-line solutions, as the workflow, including processing and movement of material, is very crucial. RR: That is when you decided to invest heavily in post-press… PJ: Over the years, the offline binders were replaced with pre-owned European inline binders from Muller Martini and Kolbus. The binding facility now includes an Accoro A5, A7, Kolbus KM 470, complete with gatherers and inline trimmers. RR: Any machinery from Indian manufacturers on the post-press shop floor? PJ: Recently, an Impel-Welbound Bindwel Bindline consisting of a 16-station Signa gatherer and a 12-clamp Freedom 4K binder were added to the above armoury. RR: How did the shop floor workers in the post-press department respond to the new machinery? PJ: Pretty well, judging by the fact that so far, we have produced 10 lakhs books in month since the installation. My team is happy that we made this decision. The Impel-Welbound director Anil Kumar visits us regularly to understand any challenges that we are facing and provides immediate solution. RR: Chasing low-priced manpower has often been touted as a dangerous practice by experts. What is your view? PJ: The more handling one has, between printing and packing plus loading on to trucks, it creates more wastage. The concept of low-cost manpower does not end up being cost effective. This is owing to the fact that the biggest cost in a bindery is manpower. And this is directly related to wastage. RR: This brings us to: inline vs offline. What are the operational benefits? PJ: By linking the process of gathering to finishing the book, we are able to ensure that the mistakes are near-zero, books do not get smeared, turnarounds happen faster, lesser energy is consumed – all of which lead to a better quality at predictable speeds and lower costs. THE IMPEL-WELBOUND PARTNERSHIP Before going in-house with our postpress machinery, all of our jobs were outsourced at shop floors, which had Welbound machines. For us, it meant a natural progression of an association of more than two decades. When Impel decided to move away from its partners in Kerala, to set up a manufacturing in Bengaluru, we were one of the early buyers of machines made in Bengaluru. Welbound Technical Services, its sister concern handled all our installations of imported European binding machines. RR: How do you want to reduce binding time for paperbacks without compromising quality? PJ: Product runs are coming down, even in educational publishing while the number of titles keeps increasing. This means a binder should be able to change over from a given setting to another as quickly as possible. With new machines and affordable automation, this is possible. RR: How often do you review your factory operations? PJ: We have operational reviews on a regular basis. As we handle a wide range of markets the complexities related to paper, sizes, book thickness, runs and turnaround times are huge. We need to be very agile in our planning and operations. RR: Agile is good. But how do you deal with the growth of complexities that accompany the company growth? PJ: There are quarterly and annual management reviews, that discuss everything from the year to date performance, forecast, uncertainties (as we face now), and opportunities. Such reviews help us conclude on the top issues and the top opportunities and then we plan the steps needed for achieving the optimal results. RR: Every time you decide to scale up the operations, there is a cost cycle that you go through… PJ: Despite having a large area for expansion, space is something that needs absolute focus as costs simply follow the increase in it. Year-on-year, if we can produce the same quantity of books at equal or better quality, while consuming less space, energy and manpower, then we have won the game. RR: And how have you managed to achieve that? PJ: From the many ways that we had thought of, one of it was to invest in a Bindwel Bindline, which consumes 35% less space and energy, while delivering the same quantity of books compared to the European binders that we have. RR: Interesting. As a publisher, how do you define long runs/short runs? PJ: We are definitely past the era of printing millions of books of the same title. Only government textbooks have print runs, which notch up in lakhs. While we may have some texts running into such numbers, the runs get reduced by division as the cover could be different and some portions are customised. In education, we consider 5,000 as short runs and 50,000 as long runs. MEERUT – AT A GLANCE The size and stature of the Meerut book industry… Meerut can be called as the Daryaganj of Uttar Pradesh. After New Delhi, Meerut must be the largest publishing printing hub in the country, though Meerut is more popular for educational publishing now. Once upon a time it used to be the pulp fiction capital of the country. One virtue about the Meerut book industry… The city used to be a hub for publishers, writers and artists of Hindi pulp fiction since its inception. Many of these publishers did printing in New Delhi due to the availability of a huge number of printers. Although printing would be in New Delhi, binding used to happen closer to home. At that time, folding was done manually at homes, before they are brought to a hall where gathering and perfect binding would happen. One inside info about Meerut … The fact that Meerut is the most cost-efficient converter of paper into books in India. Many leading integrated print houses in the country have approached publishers in Meerut for print jobs in the past, and have left with the information of our unbelievable cost of conversion. Impact of GST on the printing and publishing book industry in Meerut… GST was not good for the publishing industry, as all the increase associated to that ended with us, publishers. The consumer is not aware of the GST as books are not taxed. The distributer network was not willing to foot the cost. So, in most cases, the publishing industry ended up absorbing the same. RR: With schools and colleges remaining shut during the pandemic, how much has it impacted Arihant? PJ: Business had declined by 40%. However, we expect this segment will be quickly up and running, as we have the schools reopening now. RR: As per market reports, we are hearing that unit sales of books in the first half of 2020 is not all doom and gloom. Is there any uptick of demand? Your view… PJ: Quite true. Except school textbooks, the remaining segments have already picked up steam. And as we hear from the market, in some states such as West Bengal, even school textbooks are being printed. RR: On the other hand, a world which has virtual classrooms and growing unemployment could lead to new trends in publishing. What is the Arihant view on this? PJ: Our view is that online will coexist with classrooms. Content is the king and presentation is its queen. So be it textbooks or virtual classroom content, you have to be ahead of the curve. There are huge business opportunities for print, even in online education. RR: Many publishers have dabbled in to crossover (multimedia) content, but these are generally on the backburner. With the state of education right now, is Arihant bootstrapping some of these solutions? PJ: It is like the physical retail waking up to the new world of eCommerce. Same product is sold, but the rules are different. Once you understand, then bridging the gap will become easier. RR: Along with K-12, there would be a growing audience for skill development content. Are publishers addressing them? PJ: We have lot of content related to competitive examinations addressing employment. They cover basic subjects and special topics related to certain skills. RR: What is the one tough lesson to learn from this pandemic? PJ: Cost cutting. This is not merely on paper, but also in practice. We have no long-term plans for the future; at least for the time being. RR: I see. Let me conclude this interview with my favourite question. What is the one book project, which you produced that was very difficult? PJ: A book called General Studies Manual, which was a 2.75-inch back cut job produced on the Impel-Welbound WB@2500 six-clamp perfect binding machine.

Bharadwaj: “Some of the books have runs that are above one lakh, and sometimes we need to break and continue to produce books in parallel. Every day is a new day in learning” Shri Balaji Publications has been in the news. The publisher-printer has installed an entire range of hard cover machines from Impel in its factory in Muzzafarnagar, Uttar Pradesh. The reason: the two-decade old Shri Balaji Publications produces a wide array of books for various competitive entrance examinations and central boards. In these hard times, they needed a hard cover. The three founders, Ashish Agarwal, Neeraj Bhardwaj, and Prabhat Kumar, also ensure the distribution of these books all over India through their eRetail network since most of these books are prescribed for the CBSE board or for competitive exams. Other than higher education reference books, there are books for competitive exams like JEE and NEET. The book factory, which runs two shifts of eight hours each, has a built-in area of 10,000-sqft. The founders say, “As a publisher, we provide the best quality of content, which helps the students to gain knowledge. We do not compromise in the quality of content and naturally, this gets extended to the print and binding quality. We integrated backward as we were not getting the quality from the market despite willing to pay the price.” That’s how the factory boasts of two WB@2500 and a full range of case-binding machines. This includes the Starplus case-maker, casing-in and joint forming and a Wohlenberg gatherer plus three-knife trimmers. This is backed by a Heidelberg four-colour press as well as three Rota Print web presses. The founders, speaking exclusively to PrintWeek, explains, “Since 2018, the Impel-Welbound team in North India, led by Anil Kumar, has given us great support in our binding unit. We trust its quality and technical support. When we dared to set up our own hard cover binding system, we could not think of anyone else.” The training at Shri Balaji Publications included Impel-Welbound’s top managers, including the division’s CEO Rohin Kumar, visiting the headquarters in Muzzafarnagar. But there is a story within the story. The Shri Balaji team built the factory from scratch in three months. During that period, the machines were installed plus the books were being produced in-house. Neeraj Bhardwaj says, “As publishers, our jobs were outsourced till December 2017. Then, at the start of 2018, we thought of having an in-house printing press.” Bhardwaj continues, “This was a risk, which we took, as this decision was in the midst of our peak academic book season.” When asked why they opted for this disruption, Bhardwaj says, “We took this step because we were not getting the quality in books. Our books were being delayed in the market and we had rejections as these did not meet our quality aspirations.” Beneath the veneer of textbook production, there is a lot of complexity. For example, the books for JEE and NEET require a huge number of versions and revisions. These require complex organisation and need a very agile print production facility. Bharadwaj says, “Some of the books have runs that are above one lakh, and sometimes we need to break and continue to produce books in parallel. Every day is a new day in learning.” The team at Shri Balaji is grateful. Ashish Bhardwaj says, “We had huge support Impel-Welbound that helped us set up and turnaround jobs fast.” rabhat Bhardwaj adds, “We never thought of producing hard cover books in-house. And when we set this up, with the support from Impel-Welbound, the company advised us on everything that can go wrong or right, and we felt confident.” Rohin Kumar, CEO of Impel’s hard cover machines vertical with an automatic case-maker Impel-Welbound partnership The Impel-Welbound group, after establishing and streamlining the soft cover book production in Bengaluru, decided to foray into the hard cover book segment. Suresh Nair, director, Impel-Welbound, says, “In our erstwhile avatar in the partnership with the Kerala-based Intimate Machines Group, we were always focused on soft cover bookbinding. We had internal expertise with respect to application, thanks to our partnership with Henkel Adhesives. We did not look at making hard cover machines as the segment already had a few suppliers clamouring for sales.” Nair continues, “However, every time we were having a discussion with a new customer – usually a commercial printer establishing in-house bookbinding, the requirement used to come up. Even our existing customers complained about the lack of quality hard cover-making equipment. While there were some solutions, the casing-in and finishing operations remained the forte of artisans; or you needed to import machines.” There are top class solutions for book-block making, from companies like Joy D- Sign; but there was a gap when it came to quality solutions for hard cover books. Nair continues, “Instead of starting from the scratch, we teamed up with experts in the field, like Rohin Kumar, who comes with the experience of running a company manufacturing such machines. We gave it the capital and design infrastructure to come up with products that will handle the diverse requirement in commercial printing, be it sizes, material or productivity.” The Impel-Welbound team added after-sales support which included solid training in the technology so that the process becomes fool-proof. Conclusion The unlocking, which began in May 2020, threw up challenges which have not been witnessed before. Availability of material, labour and technical support remained among the top of issues faced by book printing. Machines were stranded without trained manpower or they broke down and refused to work. Rohin Kumar, CEO of Impel’s hard cover machines division, says, “Impel-Welbound differentiated itself by being able to supply raw material, spare parts and after-sales support, just in time despite all the challenges.” He adds, “We had engineers based out of places like Guwahati, Mathura, Kolhapur – and for the customers facing an operational challenge, this was a huge relief. A few customers looked at this as a signal for trying out the hard cover solutions from us. And this resulted in sales to markets like Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Bengaluru, Chandigarh, NCR region and so on.” Kumar signs off, “Quality is part of the Shri Balaji’s eco-system and its takes pride in delivering a book with the right content and quality.” Case in point, a voluminous, two inches plus Physics textbook – Advanced Problems in Physics.

Naresh Chandna, director, Sai Printo Pack Naresh Chandna, director, Sai Printo Pack tells Rahul Kumar his reasons to choose the Bindwel Freedom 4K from Impel-Welbound. Please describe your company. We are an integrated book printing firm with in-house capabilities from design to fulfilment. We address a large variety of publishers from legal, academic, education and trade. We are equipped with both digital and offset printing facilities for both hardcover and paperback production. When did you start using the Impel-Welbound product? We had a single-clamp binder from Welbound long back. We decided to have a look at one more machine from them after Impel broke away from the Trivandrum group and put up its products in the last PrintPack exhibition. We installed the Freedom 4K binder in October 2019. What are the features of the machine you like? Its speed, flexibility, expandability and reliable local service support. Above all, it is future-ready for various gluing technologies. Why did you decide to use the Freedom 4K? We already had a medium speed binder with us, before, that gives about 1,500 books per hour. However, we faced bottlenecks while addressing the changing needs of our customers, be it in terms of turnaround times or quality. Impel introduced us to the Bindwel Freedom 4K machine that can produce up to 4,000 books per hour, and also can be linked to a gatherer and three-knife trimmer. What are the features that tilted the favour in this? Freedom 4K gives you the freedom to add machines before or after it, to complete the line. One can upgrade to PUR binding without any difficulty. Job changeover is fairly easy to handle. It is a modern machine, unlike some of the pre-owned imported models that we looked at, and helps produce high quality books while keeping your operational costs minimal. Its powerful MIS interface gives us timely information on production and costs. How much have these features helped you? We have been able to address our customer requirements better, providing deliveries faster than before. Our customers also have appreciated the quality of ornamental creasing, side gluing and firmly nipped book spines. For what applications is the product used? We use the binder for all our soft cover book production requirements. If there’s a critical post press job that has come your way, would you rely on this to see it through? Yes, of course, with a brand new machine and with the support of capable application engineers from Impel — there will be no concern at all. The advantage of dealing with a forward looking company like Impel is that they do not go only by the specs sheet, and are willing to address some on-the-job issues we are likely to encounter. What’s the quality like? Compared to our earlier process, the spine and side gluing are much better, and so are cover creasing and the firmness of the book spine. How easy is it to use and handle? This machine is ideal for book printers who have production requirement of above 10,000 books per day. As the future is for inline binding — as space, manpower, energy and wastage need to be reduced — this is an ideal machine to invest in. Would you say that it offers value for money? The machine offers a good value for money. Though the investment costs are higher compared to pre-owned European machines, the overall cost of ownership is much lower. Be it energy consumption, space requirement, upgradeability – Freedom 4K stands ahead. Were there any difficulties during the use of Freedom 4K? There are teething issues with any new machine or technology and we faced it in this case as well. The biggest advantage I see is the quick response of the service team and their ability to address the issue without any delay. Who do you think the Freedom 4K is right for? Inline binding has become a necessity and every book printer will need to switch over from the current offline solutions based on the production requirements. Under what circumstances would you recommend it to others? Unless your requirements are short to medium run or if you are in the digital book print business, you will need a machine of this speed and expandability. CONCLUSION User’s verdict Speed ★ ★ ★ ★ Quality ★ ★ ★ ★ Reliability ★ ★ ★ ★ Value for money ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Supplier’s response Pallippuram Sajith, director, Impel Services (A Welbound Group Company), says, “Bindwel Freedom 4K is a 12-clamp perfect binder which can be connected inline with a gatherer and three-knife trimmer. Freedom 4K occupies the minimum space and consumes lowest energy among the class of binders delivering similar throughput. Be it thin or thick books or a wide range of signatures or covers, Freedom 4K provides optimal quality with minimal wastage. Along with our Signa 4K gatherer and Trimit three-knife trimmer, Freedom 4K establishes the ‘Bindline’ inline soft cover book production system. Sai Print o Pack have always strived to differentiate themselves by delivering good quality binding in tight schedules consistently and Freedom 4K will vastly help them in their core strength.” Contact details Pallippuram Sajith, director Impel Services (A Welbound Group Company) Email: sajith@welbound.com Mobile: +91 93210 86601

(l-r) The nextgen Guptas- Rajiv, Sanjay, and Prashant Seeking flexibility, SDR Printers opted for a Bindwel Freedom > 4K – 12-clamp perfect binder nine months ago. The book printing unit, based in Tronica city, in the outskirts of New Delhi, has been growing at a fair clip and so, new challenges required new solutions. A PrintWeek report. Founded in 1998 by Anil Jain, the offset printing unit located in Nazafgarh Road focuses primarily on large Government tenders, across India, with a specific interest in textbooks. SDR Printers produces educational books for leading MNC and Indian publishers. It provides end-to-end facility, beginning with pre-press to fulfilment. The company kept adding web offset machines to its array of Heidelberg sheetfeds, and did not realise that it was running out of space — space constraints for machines, some manual operations that took up space; and the work-in-progress between the sewing machine and the Welbound six-clamp binder. The family-run company, established by LN Gupta in 1986, realised that it needed to have a long-term plan to service its customers better. And so, the new generation of Guptas — Sanjay, Deepak and Rajiv — got into action. They brainstormed and created a plan, which helped them increase the available space by acquiring a nearby factory and increasing internal efficiencies through replacement of machines. The backbone of the print facility is an eight-colour heatset Heidelberg Harris reelfed machine. This is complete with an inline stacker that bundles the signatures into neat piles that can be transported for signature gathering. Three high-speed folding machines support the four-colour sheetfed presses, three in all, from Heidelberg. Then there are five thread sewing machines which produce book blocks later bound by a six-clamp WB2000 plus an offline Kolbus binder. As most of the books produced by SDR are either thread-sewn or wire-stitched before being covered on an adhesive binder, the speed differences among the machines posed a challenge to their production. So the first plan, along with increased space and installation of more sewing machines, was to boost the adhesive binding capability. Books delivered into a conveyor connected to a trimmer Multiple options The SDR top management explored various options, including a pre-owned Kolbus line that would help streamline the workflow from gathering to three-knife trimming. “We had already seen a few machines in Europe and were in a discussion with Welbound Technical Services to inspect the line and then help commission the same in our factory,” Rajiv Gupta explains. Anil Kumar, the Impel-Welbound head for sales, helped the Guptas and the shopfloor team through each and every step, even though the company was not considering an investment in a Welbound kit. Rajiv Gupta adds, “During PrintPack 2019, we learnt of the separation of the manufacturing arm from Kerala and the front-end headquartered in Mumbai, and that’s when we took a unanimous decision to invest in the Bindwel Freedom > 4K.” Sanjay Gupta adds, “We evaluated the 12-clamp binder from Impel-Welbound during PrintPack 2019 and liked the concept. You can start with the binder, add a book block feeder when you need, add a gathering machine that can also have side stitching, and finally connect it to an inline trimmer. A solution that gave us complete freedom, of effectively utilising the resources — be it capital, space or manpower.” Round-pile cover feeder allows additional stacking Growth plans Rajiv Gupta points out, “We had no doubt in our partner for our growth plans for bookbinding. Here was a person and his company which was willing to help us in any manner, even if it meant getting a pre-owned Kolbus commissioned. Welbound had a clear idea of the challenges faced by book printers. In fact, I think it probably has one of the best after-sales service teams for post-press in India. Plus, its own manufacturing plant in Karnataka. This backing, plus the benefits offered by the 12-clamp binder, made us pick the binder for our new capacity.” Sanjay Gupta adds, “There were teething issues with the new machine in our place. We were moving from a six-clamp which is more forgiving in process issues. Also, we were moving to a system that had the capability to expand in both directions, and demanded that our process delivers inputs that are consistent.” And so, the SDR top management invited Suresh Nair, the Impel-Welbound’s technical director, who is based in Bengaluru. Rajiv Gupta says, “Nair visited us and spent two days in educating us and our operations team about the ‘do’s and don’ts’ and also highlighted a few gaps in process and equipment. The Impel-Welbound team even spent time in adjusting other machines like the thread-sewing machines, so that the binder received consistent inputs.” The right solution SDR believes that it invested in the right solution that can be expanded with gluing options and add-ons before or after the binder. The Bindwel Freedom > 4K binder is capable of producing 4,000 books per hour, has centrally-adjustable twelve book clamps, an infeed and a lay-down delivery that takes the books to an inline trimmer. Impel-Welbound is selling bindery in the Indian and African markets. Some of these are shipped as gathering-binding combination with an in-line Signa gatherer. And a few have opted for PUR gluing in addition to EVA. According to Kumar of Impel-Welbound, the book printers in North India are demanding more throughputs. So far, pre-owned, European equipment have not delivered as per expectations. Most of them operate at half the rated speed and create maintenance issues. Therefore, a new machine that can have modular add-ons is the right tech-option. Key SDR customers are Orient Blackswan (OBS), McGraw Hill and Rachna Sagar. The Guptas are very proud about the fact that they bagged the first prize in excellence in book production from the Federation of Indian Publishers. This was the Sangam Atlas produced for OBS. Five simple tips from Suresh Nair, the Impel-Welbound CTO 1. Inline binders help you reduce the space requirement by 50% and man-power requirements by 70%. 2. Pre-owned binders run at very low operational efficiencies – be it speed, turnaround times or break-downs – turn out expensive even in the medium-run. 3. Per book cost is absolutely important, whether you are servicing an MNC publisher or a government textbook board. It is not the investment cost that matters. 4. Inline binders are less forgiving than the offline solutions when it comes to quality and consistency of the inputs. Be it the quality of pressed and stacked signatures, book block thickness uniformity, consistency and tightness of thread-sewing or conformity of side stitching. But then all these are important for reducing in-process wastage as well as delivering quality output at increased speeds. So if you are waiting for the day when all these inputs improve before you invest in an inline binding solution, then it will be too late. Buy the horse and the process of fitting the cart will automatically follow. 5. It is high time to look at the long term objectives to save costs; be it choosing the right grain direction, making the cover longer than the book block, having regular maintenance plan for your old machines, moving to non-pigmented better quality adhesives, using a high capacity melter while doing thick books, have energy audits done and most importantly, safety first.

(l-r) Anil Jain, Sunil Jain and Navin Jain with the newly installed machine New Delhi-based Arihant Offset has installed a brand new WB@2500 six-clamp perfect binding machine manufactured by Impel-Welbound in Bengaluru. Founded in 1998 by Anil Jain, the offset printing unit located in Nazafgarh Road focuses primarily on large Government tenders, across India, with a specific interest in textbooks. “As some of the jobs that we undertake are of huge volumes, sometimes there is huge pressure on capacities. We also cannot build fresh capacity as some of these jobs are seasonal or once in a while. We have additional print partners in NCR and Mathura who help us in times of such capacity requirements”, said Anil Jain. “We have always met our customer requirements, be it on turnaround times or quantity or fulfilment. Our USP is- be it one thousand books or one million, we will produce and deliver it, anywhere in India,” he added. The sprawling 40000 sqft plant is equipped with a wide range of pre-press and post-press equipment apart from a raft of presses. Talking about some of their challenging jobs, Jain said, “ We are especially proud of a book made for the ministry of agriculture, from design to delivery in 72 hours. There is also a 65 million books order for a textbook corporation, which was delivered in 60 days from the date of order.” “And not to forget when Punjab Technical University wanted six lakh answer sheets within one week, they relied on Arihant to fulfil the order, and we promptly delivered them,” he added. “As they are used to meeting such near-impossible deadlines when they ordered a machine, they wanted it installed within 10 days. We had just done such a task recently for another customer and that gave us the confidence”, said Anil Kumar, director sales of Impel-Welbound. “From the time of discussions, order finalisation to installation, we found the Impel team to be professional. One of the top reasons we opted for WB@2500 is that we wanted to insource some of our critical jobs that are high value,” said Jain. “Apart from the top quality finishing, the MIS feature of the machine was something that impressed us. As we cater to tenders that are time-bound, the information of production and cost parameters on a daily/periodic basis is helping us immensely to track the status of the jobs,” he concluded. This is one of the seven WB@2500 perfect binders installed by Impel-Welbound in NCR region so far, since partial lifting of lockdown in the area since May 2020.

Arvind Kalasur, director-technical services, and Suresh Nair, CTO, Impel-Welbound, outside the Rokin Technology premises Impel-Welbound, India’s leading supplier of book binding machines, has entered into an agreement with Rokin Technology to introduce hard cover case-making solutions in India. Arvind Kalasur, director-technical services, travelled with Suresh Nair, the CTO of the group, to evaluate the Rokin products prior to this announcement. Rokin Technology has twenty years of experience in handling hard cover, rigid boards and converting them to cases, stationery and boxes. The latest solution from Rokin was displayed at international events, and according to Nair, they are exemplary because of their compact design and high-end automation. “The R18 case-maker occupies minimal floor space, and has excellent “throughput to area” ratio. The gluing system has a viscometer which helps control the viscosity of the adhesive–water combination. This is important to maintain consistency during higher speeds. The machine also accepts a wide range of covers and can bind up to seven pieces of boards,” Nair said. In addition to the R18 case-maker, Rokin also manufactures board cutters, corner cutters and other auxiliary equipment required for hard cover manufacturing. So far, Welbound had stayed away from the hard cover market, instead focusing its attention on soft covers. Despite customer feedback about building such solutions, the demand for perfect binders kept the company’s engineering team busy. “A lot of our leading customers who also have European soft and hard cover binders, constantly asked us to provide alternate solutions — new, flexible, yet cost effective. So when we met the Rokin team, we realised that we can be partners and work together in order to fill this gap,” said Kalasur who is spearheading the partnership, in addition to heading Welbound Technical Services. Seana Huang, sales director of Rokin Technolgy, said, “We have already shipped machines to India, and with this association with Impel-Welbound, who have a great reputation and extensive after-sales support, we hope to have many machines shipped into India soon.”

Within three months since the installation, the new binders have delivered more than 10-lakh books each Ganesh Printers, a Kolhapur-based commercial printer, which specialises in textbook printing, has installed four WB@2500 six-clamp perfect binding machines manufactured by Welbound Wolrdwide P Ltd in Bengaluru. The four new binders, which were commissioned in December 2018, have added to a battery of five six-clamp Welbound perfect binding kits and a Muller Martini inline perfect binding equipment on Ganesh Printers’ shopfloor. With the new investment, the company can now manufacture 2-lakh books per day up from its earlier capacity of 1.2-lakh books per day. “The idea is to accelerate time-to-market without compromising on book quality – that’s our USP. And therefore, investing in Welbound machines ahead of the textbook season made a lot of sense” said Sanjay Thorwat, director at Ganesh Printers. Shakti Nadar, area sales manager for Maharashtra, Impel Welbound said, “Ganesh Printers has scaled up its capacities and we have always supported their requirements to market - be it quality or speed. This was made possible by the supply of our new generation EPIC perfect binders, cool bind adhesives from Henkel and our prompt service support.” The company, which was established by Thorwat’s father MG Thorwat in 1987, started operations with a treadle press. Today, it houses two four-colour Heidelberg sheetfed offset presses and six web offset printing machines. These are supported by two CTP devices, two folders from Stahl and Shoei, two Welbound three-knife trimmers and 10 perfect binding machines. Operating from a 1-lakh sqft production floor in three shifts, Ganesh Printers produces government textbooks for Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra, and Andhra Pradesh. Within three months since the installation, the new binders have delivered more than 10-lakh books each. “The new machines with a higher speed of 2,500 books per hour improve productivity and this is significant especially during peak season. But that’s not all, these machines are sturdy and reliable. What I particularly like about the WB@2500 is the moving CAM type cover nipping unit that produces squarely nipped books,” added Thorwat.

The Henkel-Welbound Book Days will be a specialised gathering of book publishers and printers, who will explore the best new ideas for innovation and growth. Enabled by Henkel and Welbound, the events hosted at PrintPack 2019 will be practical and collaborative. The aim is to tap into the renewed optimism in the book sector with publishers, printers and designers. The latest theme – Growth For All – is all about the book's potential to transform the publishing world and drive new growth. This will mark the beginning of a series of activities and events through the year to celebrate Books For All, that will take transpire in important book hubs across India. "Books for All is an attempt to build a much more unified structure," Pallippuram Sajith, director of Welbound Worldwide P Ltd says. "Some say the book industry and book publishing structure is fragmented and in a world where clients want faster, better, cheaper executions. We want a book print firm to ensure it is possible." Team Welbound's aim through Book Days - Books for All is to re-kindle the joy of the printed books and drum support in its mission to provide "faster, better, cheaper" books for publishers and readers. This will be possible through three weapons in Welbound's ever-growing armoury: technical knowledge; respect for content and how to organise it in the best possible manner; and above all, unite the creative and production functions in a way that hasn’t been done for decades. Sajith says, "People expect relevance these days. And so, you must speak to each person in the shopfloor or on the editorial desk in a unique way. During PrintPack we will create a special booth wherein users can have success to simpler versions of techs-specs and tech-kit. Plus we are creating chat-points which can relate to everyone from industry veterans to millenials." Each and every day at the PrintPack show will see ... - Book about Book Days: A souvenir that celebrates past 20 years of Indian book printing, book awards plus the plans for the year. The plans include: special events for printers and publishers in their cities and localities - The launch of E-utilities: Apps that will help you resolve issues, train team members and address customer requirements - Facebook Live: Book interviews with leading book printers which will be conducted by the PrintWeek India Welbound Worldwide is bullish about books. And along with the thousands of book print factories across India, the company is "excited" about helping clients and harnessing a robust ecosystem plus that create a labour force that knows how to produce the best books at the lowest cost. Welbound will unveil seven knowledge-sharing projects from 1 to 6 February A quick introduction to the mobile book testing lab - that can be set up easily at any place The importance of fundamentals. Emphasise the quality and cost-effectiveness of binding which starts and ends with planning. How to build strong books, more cost effectively Meet the book specialists. Confabulate with India's top brains in book manufacturing planning, bookbinding, adhesives, machines and maintenance Prize-winning contest - Guess what! - Grain direction, GSM, Page Pull Value, Adhesive coat layer and a lot more Practical workshops to grasp the relationship between paper, bookbinding machine, adhesives and the quality of binding. Be ready to be surprised New Gen Smart machines that will communicate with you and boost your productivity What do you want to know about book printing: Answer the questionnaire completed that will provide you with all relevant information and also help us build a service platform that will answer your questions - real time, at the touch or swipe on a smartphone

German specialist of paper folding machines, GUK will launch Multimaster 38 product information leaflet folders at Print Summit 2019 in Mumbai. Speaking to PrintWeek India, Friedrich Faulhaber, managing director, GUK-Vijuk-Sigma group, said, “The best in class miniature folding machine will be affordable and will have attractive return-on-investment.” While Faulhaber will not be present during the launch, GUK's India partner Impel-Welbound will release the specification and capabilities of this high-capacity miniature folding machine. Faulhaber said, “I will miss India and PS19, this time. I was here for the PS18 and enjoyed spending time with our customers as well as meeting the massive number of printers and suppliers at this major event." He added, "India is a one of our most important markets, and we have strong partners in form of Impel-Welbound who market and position our world-class products effectively and provide excellent after-sales support. The years 2017 and 2018 have been very good years globally, as well as in India, and we hope to continue the same in 2019.” Pallippuram Sajith, director of Impel-Welbound group, said, “There is a demand from the market to have an efficient equipment that can replace multiple old machines." The Multimaster 38, which will be manufactured in Germany, features fold pockets and deflectors, microprocessor-powered controller with counting function, and suction feeder PBA will come with vacuum pumps. It will come with four or six buckles in the first stage and four in the second. It will also be equipped with a GUK stacker to collect the leaflets. The Multimaster 38 is scheduled to start shipping from March 2019.

The Impel-Welbound team at PrintPack 2019 Rushikesh Aravkar catches up with Sajith Pallippuram of Impel-Welbound at the 14th edition of PrintPack India. What is the star product of Impel-Welbound stand? We are showcasing the WB@4000 12-clamp perfect binding machine. This is the first 12-clamp perfect binding machine manufactured at our Bengaluru facility. I would describe this machine as flexible and expandable. Flexible because, the user has the choice of using different gluing systems – cold glue, hotmelt EVA, new-generation ultra adhesive, and PUR. The different gluing systems require different set up. We have provided a system where one can switch from one gluing method to the other seamlessly. And expandable because? This machine can be coupled with our high-speed gatherer and also to an inline three-knife trimmer. How does this help the customer? The Welbound Technical Services team has been involved in installing and servicing several imported secondhand 12-clamp perfect binders. What we have observed is, when a user makes this switch from a six-clamp machine to an inline binder, there a steep learning curve. It involves understanding the signature, how they are processed in printing and binding stage — are the signatures kept under pressure, are they stacked. This is especially true when one is switching from manual gathering to inline automated gathering and inline binding. As a result, though the machines are equipped, the user is not able to derive the expected throughput out of these high-speed machines. Moreover, it also results in higher energy consumption and the wastage of consumables like adhesives. So, even if the secondhand machines are affordable, the price per book is pretty high. We have seen a series of our own customers who have invested in such machines in the past and have suffered in the process. So, the customers who are making this automation switch are looking to start with a high-speed binding machine that would allow books to be fed manually at the initial stage. And as they grow they are willing to add to the automation. That’s where the WB@4000 fits in. It produces 4,000 books per hour. It is a EPIC series of WB Impel-Welbound binding machines. EPIC stands for efficiency, productivity, intelligence and cost-effectiveness. Explain EPIC. How does one achieve efficiency, productivity, and cost-effectiveness? For these things to improve, one needs to have the information on what happens when you are running a book, or you are changing a book, or when a machine is not maintained, or when the machines are not cleaned properly. These kinds of things have impact on costs. We have put energy meters in the machines which gather information such as costs incurred when the machine starts consuming more energy because one is idling the machine or when one is not running the machine at a higher speed or because the knives are blunt or because the glue tank was not cleaned regularly. We have realised that we need to work with the book printers in order to have a continuous improvement of cost efficiency. The areas that we can look at are: one is machine, which will give you the throughput productivity and minimise wastage. How does this make the machine intelligent? The machine makes the information available to the user to act upon. It's a one way communication from the machine to the user in a readable format or to the user’s ERP. The information can be delivered in the form of an email or an SMS or you it can be downloaded in MS Excel format. This information can be used to figure out if anything is going wrong in the machine or to find to the root cause of a problem in the machine. It definitely can be used to improve efficiency and productivity. Does it also tell you if the quality of a book is good enough? An inspection system cannot work only by systems. It required expert people to use the available data to make inferences and make right decisions. With WTS programme, we are educating everyone who's involved in bookbinding to understand how to test a book, how to look at the things which can go wrong and also then trace it back to the root cause if something is incorrect. There’s no point in trying to make corrections at the end of the process. One needs to go trace the issue back to the planning stage and make amendments there because root cause can be in grain direction or folding or any intermediate process. There are methods of visual inspection, there are methods of testing a book, and then there also in-process inspection. At this exhibition, we are promoting the entire concept of testing your books well. This includes a page-pull tester, glue-level measurement devices, digital and analogue thermometers. We are also showcasing that with right adhesive in right quantity and right spine finishing can provide better quality and spending lower costs. This is an eye-opener for many customers who have visited our stand. The page-pull tester is the only way of measuring the strength of a binding. We have created this tool and we are selling it with our machines at a subsidised cost. This helps the customer will be able to give a number to the quality that he produces. The third important cost is adhesive. Our partnership with Henkel has been over 25 years now. It has allowed us to introduce the best of adhesives technologies that are adapted to the Indian scenarios. So they form a crucial partner in the process. With efficient machines and processes and services, the idea is to ensure that we are delivering the right quality at the lowest possible cost. Our aspiration is to help the entire supply chain bring down the cost of books. This cannot happen overnight. It needs change in the way people work. We will play that significant part of working with all the stakeholders in continuously reducing the cost and providing better books. How many installations of EPIC bookbinding machines? We have supplied 60 six-clamp WB@2500 machines. This also includes exports to Bangladesh and African countries. We have been able to meet aspirations of the customers with this new model in terms of 35% more productivity. We have made the temperature control digital so that it’s easy to use. Plus the nipping is able to handle up to 500gsm cover with accurate and adjustable creasing. The at-the-rate (@) symbol signifies that these machines are internet-ready, they are talking to you through emails. Is the bookbinding industry in India ready for smart automation? The biggest cost in bookbinding is labour. Moreover, signature gathering is a highly-skilled job. It is getting difficult to get skilled labour. So automation is inevitable. Smart automation with a human face is what we need. There are certain things that are better done by human hands so as to achieve good quality, probably at a lower cost than what it would be.

Gaurav Agrawal of G-tech Print Works Mathura-based G-tech Print Works has recently invested in a WB@2500, the new model of six-clamp binder from Welbound. According to Gaurav Agrawal of G-tech, the new investment has given the company the advantage of higher speed and better quality. Run by the father-son duo, Anil Kumar Agrawal and Gaurav Agrawal, G-tech Print Works prints government text books, NCERT books, guides and question banks, work books, etc. Its target customers include all government departments, PSUs, and publishing houses, with the state education department being its biggest customer. Working from two swanky units in aggregate 35,000-sqft covered area, Agrawal said the company’s USP is the fastest turnaround of books. In this, the new WB@2500 has been a great help. Agrawal said, “All our perfect binding jobs are done on six-clamp Welbound machines. The recently installed WB@2500 has given us advantages of higher speed and better quality. The machine also provides us detailed information on the daily production, which is very important while working in a highly competitive environment.” While Agrawal is proud of the works G-tech Print Works has done over the years, he said the company is especially proud of its association with the MP Text Book Corporation, Bhopal. In another big project, G-tech Print Works printed around 8.91 lakh copies of the book Seekhne Ke Pratifal for Sarva Siksha Abhiyan Uttarakhand for 2018-19. The company also supplied school books to Haryana state within a tight deadline of 45 days. Mathura is one of the largest textbook print production centres in the country. Textbooks of various state governments, be it north, east or west, get printed in this town. “As reliability of machines and prompt after-sales are of utmost importance to remain competitive, book printers in Mathura always rely on us. The father-son duo of Anil and Gaurav Agrawal has reputation for keeping deadlines while delivering quality,” Ramakant Singh, Impel-Welbound's regional manager for North India, said. Anil Kumar, Impel-Welbound's national sales manager, added, “We are proud of our customers in Mathura, like G-tech Print Works, who produce textbooks for state governments cost-effectively and ‘in time’, so that our children can have affordable education. In the coming days, appropriately named ‘Book Days’, we will celebrate such achievements."

Sanjay Goel of First Impression Noida-based First Impression Corp Services has recently installed the Welbound six-clamp WB@2500 binding machine. According to Sanjay Goel of First Impression, the reasons for investing in the machines were the specifications of the models and the company’s tech support. “WB@2500 is a great machine to have. It’s more productive, more capable and quite state-of-the art. In the last three months, we have already done more than 1 million books using the machine, and when the HMI of the machine announced this, I was proud that we bought this,” Goel said. Established in 1993, First Impression Corp Services is into educational books, coprorate brochures and exports, and targets national publishers with pan-India presence for books and multi-national corporates for their brochures and catalogues. With in-house pre-press to post-press under one roof, according to Goel, the USP of the company is quality production with fast turnaround and quick deliveries. “This makes us invest in brand new machines with reliable support from manufacturers, like we have done for Komori and Welbound,” he added. About Welbound, Goel is particularly impressed with its after-sales support. “What differentiates Impel-Welbound from many other suppliers is its after-sales support. Often, you hardly meet the sales executive once the sale is completed. In the case of Welbound, however, the sales executive remains the single point contact to get any requirements, in both services and technical support,” Goel said. Working in a 50,000-sqft covered space, the company has the production capacity of 50,000 to 60,000 books within 24 hours. Explaining how the installation of WB@2500 has helped the company, Goel gives the example of a book with a 500-gsm board cover, with inline feeding and cover scoring. “This was not possible in the older model of binding machine that we have, a WB2000, and we thought we may have to manually place the cover. Then the Welbound team ensured us that this can be done using the new WB@2500,” he said. Among big volume jobs, the company has produced 1.5 lakh books for exports in a week, from printing to binding. It has also delivered 10,000 books in less than 24 hours, from printing to binding, to Goyal Brothers Prakashan. Top publishers in First Impression’s roaster include S Chand, Goyal Brothers and Rachna Sagar, among others. Corporate clients include Syska LED and DCM, among others. According to Anil Kumar, Impel-Welbound's national sales manager, First Impression always creates a great impression with its customers, be it for out-of-the-box thinking, near-impossible delivery periods or for desired quality standards. Sanjay Goel leads from the front and is always available for his customer's to address any of their requirements; and in-turn, we enjoy working with a customer who will challenge our notions and help us stretch our limits,” he added.

Satish Borade of Creative with the new machine Mumbai-based Creative has recently installed a Welbound six-clamp WB@2500 binding machine. This is the company’s second Welbound machine on the shopfloor. Creative was started by Satish Borade in 2010 with a two-colour machine and a pre-owned perfect binding machine. Since then, the company has grown to install a Welbound six-clamp machine in 2017, followed by the second investment recently. Borade said speed, safety and much better quality were the reasons for choosing the new WB@2500 binding machine. He said in the last couple of years, the company has seen a substantial rise in volume. “Previously, we were doing 20-lakhs books a year. But last year, we did almost 70-lakh books,” he said. In the current year, the company is aspiring to cross the one-crore mark. Creative’s target segment is publishers. The company produces 40 to 50-lakhs books in a year for Chetna publications. It is also planning to produce 40-lakhs books this year for Balbharati, the Maharashtra State Board. Working from a 15,000-sqft shopfloor, Creative runs three four-colour machines from NBG and two perfect binding kits from Welbound, trident trimmer machine, and pinning and cutting machines, among others. This year, the company also invested in a pre-owned Heidelberg sheetfed machine. Borade said the USP of his company is on-time delivery and quality product. “There are factors that determine on-time delivery. These include machinery and its vacancy, efficiency and productivity,” he said. Borade is proud of what the company has able to achieve. He said, “In the last one year, we produced almost 70-lakh books, which was a challenging task. But we managed to print and bind them all on time, and that too, in-house, and too, without any defect or rejections.” Shakti Nadar, area sales manager for Impel Welbound, said, "Creative is one of the fastest growing book printers in the west of India. Borade has years of experience in book printing before he started this company, and this reflects in his approach to book production — be it the perfect binder, adhesive used or usage of three knife trimmer for book trimming."

According to Nielsen, the Indian book market is worth USD6.7 billion. It is the third-largest English language market in the world, and many regional language markets are thriving. In the past 12 months, the demand for books has continued to climb. Pallippuram Sajith, director of Welbound Worldwide P Ltd said, “Over the full year, the Indian book industry has seen an uplift in terms of quantities, orders and run lengths. If 3-4 years ago, there was doom and gloom because of the advent of e-books and the impact of Brexit, it has become clear that a decline in demand for printed books is actually highly unlikely.” Sajith added, “The millennial parents want their children to have the touch and feel of books, and this has brought back colouring books and alphabet books back into fancy. The change is perceivable from the fact that the ‘children’s books segment’ is on the growth path.” “Printed trade-books in India, are on a path of double-digit growths”, mentioned Ananth Padmanabhan, CEO, HarperCollins India, in a closed-door publishers roundtable in Delhi. He explained that books are agnostic to economic and cultural changes. Earlier if we did not deliver books in time, people bought eBooks. With print on demand strongly established in the country, this is passé. This consistent upturn for books is great news for printers and an opportunity for them to educate publishers even more so about new finishes and techniques they can use to really make their books stand out on the shelves. The Henkel-Welbound Book Days is a gathering of book publishers and printers, exploring the best new ideas for innovation and growth. Enabled by Henkel and Welbound, the events hosted at PrintPack 2019 will be practical and collaborative. The aim is to tap into the renewed optimism in the book sector with publishers, printers and designers. The latest theme – Growth For All – is all about the book's potential to transform the publishing world and drive new growth. This will mark the beginning of a series of activities and events through the year to celebrate Books For All, that will take transpire in important book hubs across India. The tangibility of printed books and the ability to experience them through multiple senses – sound, smell, sight – is often cited, and evokes far more of an emotional attachment. In addition, physical books can be seen as an expression of identity. The simple fact is that there’s nothing quite like a physical book to really engage with. Sajith concluded, “Educational books form the largest share in the graphic arts and printing industry. It is also our largest market. We have been on a continuous journey to understand the customer’s customer, help raise quality aspirations, bring in awareness about best practices. We have always tried to help our customers imbibe good management practices for their cost analysis and future investments. The printer/binder can add tremendous value to the printed book publishing chain”. At the 14th Printpack, the team Impel-Henkel-Welbound will be launching a new array of smart products and services – that will help the book printers be more efficient, productive, and cost-effective.” Henkel Adhesives, the global leader in adhesives and sealants will have their representatives from the paper and graphic Art business, in the Welbound stand. Some of the path-breaking hot melt and water-based adhesive technologies will see their India launch during this show. Also Guk-Vijuk, the technology leaders in paper folding machines for the pharmaceutical print industry will also be represented in the stand. Last two years saw the largest number of outsert folding machines being shipped to India. Nordson Corporation, another global leader in adhesives dispensing equipment will also be present at the Impel-Welbound stand. Henkel-Welbound program - Book Appreciation Course conducted by Team Welbound about book blocks, section sewing, folding techniques plus perfect binding. Suresh Maheshwaran Nair, the chief technical officer of Welbound said: “It took us many years of working closely with the publishers and printers to develop tools that will help the value chain put a “number” to the quality of bookbinding. At this show, we will display an array of solutions that will do to binding, what spectrophotometer did to colour management” - To host FaceBook Live Book Sessions, in which there shall be interviews of publishing heads at the Henkel-Welbound stall. These conversations will address the key points that emanated from the last roundtable, including recyclability and how to leverage paper; safety at the workplace; saying no to the use of single-use plastic; minimising waste during production and quality standards. The theme of these "Book Talks" is "The Enduring Appeal of Books” - Special lab testing and award competitions under the banner of Welbound Technical Services, which has managed most of the installations of pre-owned, European post-press kit that have been installed in India in the past few years. In addition to the audit, installation and commission of the adhesive binders, case makers and saddle stitchers, WTS also has undertaken high-value add tasks like retrofitting standard automation systems in lieu of proprietary ones in these machines. Aravind Kalasur, the director of WTS will oversee the process.

To download the various presentations made at the 1st National Book Printer's Conference at Thiruvananthapuram , Click the following link: Presentations at 1st NBPC Thiruvananthapuram 

Rahul Print-o-pack, New Delhi is a leading vendor for the publishing leader - Pearson Education. RPP has been been working with Pearson, since the time the latter entered the Indian market. Rahul Print-o-pack, New Delhi is a leading vendor for the publishing leader - Pearson Education. RPP has been been working with Pearson, since the time the latter entered the Indian market.Initially, Rahul outsourced the printing and binding to units in Okhla Ind area in New Delhi. Even today, the print is outsourced - but the books are bound in his own unit. This began with an investment in a Welbound Blue Chip single clamp perfectbinder, 3 years back. RPP had to continue outsourcing as the demand-peaks could not be met with a single clamp binder. In 2009, they made the decision to invest in a 6 clamp binder from Welbound.  Today, Rahul Soni acknowledges that this has helped them meet the demand as well as clock good growth rates during the year. They use Henkel's Technomelt 299 grade adhesive to bind the Pearson jobs. "Only 299 provides the strength and layer build up for Pearsons' books" says Rahul Soni.

Diploma 4z3x automatic folding machine has crossed more than 100 installations. The current year sales of the value-for-money, large format folder has been breaking all previous records. The last quarter saw six new installations in New Delhi Capital region alone.  Diploma 4z3x automatic folding machine has crossed more than 100 installations. The current year sales of the value-for-money, large format folder has been breaking all previous records. The last quarter saw six new installations in New Delhi Capital region alone.  West and South, the  traditional base for the Welbound’s folding machines also did not lag behind. The response from Kolkata has been highly encouraging. Magic International, the Noida based book printer, exporter and stationery manufacturer who procured their first Diploma folder last year for signature folding, has recently replaced an existing pre-owned folding machine with a brand-new Diploma. Gulco Press (Rakmo Press) of Okhla zeroed in on Diploma due to the machine’s capability to handle a huge variety of paper; be it Bible paper, glazed newsprint, coated paper etc. It was for the same reason that Swapna Printers of Kolkata decided in favour of the Diploma folder. Swapna Printers are the biggest book printers in Eastern India equipped with a battery of heatset and coldset web-offsets, multi colour sheetfed presses and a state of the art bookbinding facility. Due to their huge experience in Bible printing, they are already exposed to the challenges faced while folding such types of paper. N K Gossain & Co is one of the oldest and largest commercial printing presses in West Bengal. They address the complete print requirements of corporate clients like ITC Ltd, be it printing of flyers, brochures or annual reports. They are also quite active in addressing the requirement of telecom  companies. The investment in Diploma was primarily for addressing annual reports and brochures. The open architecture of the machine will help them address future requirements like folding of application forms with inline variable data printing. Silverpoint's TP binding centre at Navi Mumbai saw a 32 page Diploma getting installed in August. This will be put to use by the Award winning printer for brochures, magazines and coffee table books. Padma Quality Screen Printers is based in Thane and specialises in printing religious books. The realisation that pre‑owned folding machines may not be able to deliver the consistency and accuracy in folding, lead them to Diploma. In Kollam, near the capital of Kerala, Koppara Enterprises have been making the right investments in post-press. For automatic paper folding, they chose the large format folder from the Welbound family. Diploma has been making an impact across the length of this small state with high print density be it St Francis Press in Kochi or Kairali Offset Printers at Kozhikode

In keeping with the bullishness in the book print segment, the current quarter has had six Diploma installations in the NCR region. Welbound who manufacture Diploma in India have installed more than 100 automatic folding machines; which excludes exports to Africa and the Middle East.  In keeping with the bullishness in the book print segment, the current quarter has had six Diploma installations in the NCR region. Welbound who manufacture Diploma in India have installed more than 100 automatic folding machines; which excludes exports to Africa and the Middle East. Magic International, Noida a book printer, exporter and stationery manufacturer who procured their first Diploma folder last year for signature folding has recently replaced an existing pre-owned folding machine with a brand-new Diploma. “Diploma’s delivery, accuracy and operational efficiency are unparalleled,” said Sanjay Rai, the head of the bookbinding division at Magic International. “Diploma has now been established as a robust folder that delivers high throughputs without compromising on the fold accuracy,” said Suresh Maheswaran Nair, regional manager for Welbound. “Special features like burst-binding add advantage to the book printer,” he added. The machine has an open design and capabilities like in-line gluing and VDP printing. These features often provide the machine an edge in sectors like telecom, application forms and addressed mailers.

The resurgence in the economy has seen print companies make a prudent investment in three knife trimmers. The two models of Trident, E 20 and E 15, from the Welbound family saw innumerable installations across India. Ana Printo Graphix has set up a full-fledged bindery to support their book print export activities in Noida. This unit has selected the heavy duty trimmer, Trident E20, with speeds of 20 cycles per minute. HT Media Ltd, the media group who publishes Hindustan Times, Hindustan and Mint, have hand-picked Welbound to support their high-end commercial print activities. Along with the state of the art printing machines from Manroland, HT Media has chosen Welbound to bolster the bookbinding equipment. Trident E20 is a part of this. Repro India Ltd, the leading book printer in the domestic and export book market showed faith on the E20 to be the “offline trimmer” at their facility in Sachin, Surat. The E20 can handle extra large formats up to 44 cm x 30 cm, at 20 cycles per minute. E15, the younger model, which is gaining popularity, has a smaller footprint.  It handles the most popular book formats, up to 35 X 30 cm, at speeds of 15 cycles per minute.  Both of these follow the stringent European safety standards and provide diagnostics through PLCs.     Chaman Enterprises, the Darya Ganj, Delhi-based book printer installed a E15. According to Fardeen Ikram, the focus while selecting the equipment was on quality and consistency of trim as well as operational safety. Anil Printers Ltd, Nashik, a leading supplier of  paper and  PVC-based scratch cards for Fardeen Ikram, Chaman Enterprises, New Delhi  cellular and internet services have selected a Trident E15 for the trimming of small-sized booklets St Joseph’s Press in Thiruvanthapuram is the leading commer-cial printer in Kerala’s capital city. The press was started in 1948 and owned by Carmelite Fathers of Malabar Province, a registered Charitable Trust. They added an E20 to their print finishing department. Likewise  Santasil Basu, Anil Printers, Nashik Viani Printers, a newspapers and magazine publisher-printer, managed by Ernakulam Archdiocesan Publication Trust, also opted for an E20.. Other top notch printers in South India have also migrated towards a Trident. These are: Chennai Micro Printers in Chennai, Fr Jacob Korackal, St Joseph’s Press, Thiruvananthapuram Trivikram Technologies in Vijayawada, who picked Trident E20. Last quarter saw the Trident brand of three knife trimmers establishing the presence in the Saudi Arabia book printing market. Meanwhile, National Printers Ranchi, the leading book printer from Jharkhand got their second Trident E20 installed in January. And even as we go to press, Gita Press of Gorakhpur has added one more E20 to their bindery. This is their second Trident. Fr Justin Puthussery, Viani Paper, Kochi

It is said, each book is a world unto itself, and in it we take refuge. For that to happen, these books have to be created, perfectly. It is with this aim that Welbound Worldwide has been hosting a series of technical sessions on bookbinding across the country. The three-hour sessions, discuss “planning to trimming to perfect binding to adhesive handling.” “Books may not change our suffering, books may not protect us from evil, books may not tell us what is good or what is beautiful, and they will certainly not shield us from the common fate of the grave. But books grant us myriad possibilities: the possibility of change, the possibility of illumination.” — Alberto Manguel It is said, each book is a world unto itself, and in it we take refuge. For that to happen, these books have to be created, perfectly. It is with this aim that Welbound Worldwide has been hosting a series of technical sessions on bookbinding across the country. The three-hour sessions, discuss “planning to trimming to perfect binding to adhesive handling.” The past two months have seen bookbinding evangelists from Welbound conduct workshops at Pune and Hyderabad in multiple locations. And later, two special sessions in Noida. All India outreach The session at Pune, in January 2010 –  held in association with the Pune Press Owners Association – was attended by more than 80 printers and binders. Anil Krishna, the CEO of Henkel CAC India Pvt Ltd conducted the session on characteristics of hotmelt adhesives and their application. He highlighted the importance of applying adhesives at the right temperature, handling the application tools safely, not resorting to mixing of two different types of adhesives and the post-binding handling procedures. Later, there were two sessions at Hyderabad on two consecutive days. The first one was conducted at Pragati Offset, which the technical team from Pragati and key book printers from the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad attended. The presentation on bookbinding workflow was made by Sajith Pallippuram and moderated by P Narendra. The second event was hosted at the corporate headquarters of the country’s leading educational publishers – Orient Blackswan Pvt Ltd (OB). This was attended by the Directors of Sales, Finance and Editorial, Vice President Production and their Production Officers from Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai. These presentations had a user perspective; in order to make it relevant to the ‘print buyer&rsquo. The planning team at OBL felt they should pay a bit more attention on the procurement of text and cover paper, especially related to grain direction. They discussed the unrealistic pressures on production since a very short time is available between planning to delivery. The senior management of Orient Blackswan After the session, J Krishnadev Rao, Director Finance of Orient Blackswan seemed pleased: “Welbound provided us with a very educative, interactive session on issues related to adhesive binding” Capital gain The next stop was Noida, in the National Capital Region. This session was attended by more than 100 printers and binders. Then there was an ‘interactive workshop’ at Pearson Education India, at their Noida office. The production officers of both Pearson and their group company Penguin India joined this session. A few members from their editorial team also participated. According to Subhasis Ganguly, VP‑Production, Pearson Education: “My team members enjoyed the workshop. We hope that we could work together to implement a better work flow and improved technology at our print partners” Pearson Education team, New Delhi All the Q&A sessions, across the various venues, had a few common concerns: Many printers objected to the insistence on specifications about grain direction. The reason being: they buy paper or board in large stocks, due to cost benefits. Sometimes the information on grain is not provided. In fact these are labelled as GAW (Grain Any Way) in jest. However it was concluded that if printers demand the grain that they need, they will get it. During the Q&A sessions, there were questions on varnishing and coating of the inside of covers.  Dinesh Ingawale explained that if coating is necessary, it will will have to be spot and localised coating which can be done using a UV printing unit (either offset or screen).Participants were shown the sample of books to link the problems to causes. Perfectly bound The session on perfect binding machine and ideal settings were popular among users of such machines. Most of them noted issues related to temperature control, safety and handling of the book soon after binding. They agreed that it was imperative to implement better material movement within their plants once they understood the issue related to wastage. At some sessions, the costing of perfect binding was discussed. The majority opinion was that binders do not estimate the costs correctly – thereby incurring losses on their print job. Typical case-studies were examined. The findings were a revelation. An adhesive binding job, according to calculations which should cost Rs.1.7 per book, a publisher was offering Rs.1.1 and there are takers.  In most cases, the cost of investment and rent were not calculated. Plus there were antiquated methods of pricing. This included multiplying the variable cost to arrive at pricing. Or else, if “A” book printer can do at Rs X, then of course, “B” book printer can do the same job at Rs. 0.8 X. Welbound has agreed to support the book printer community in India by empowering them with information that will enable them to “correctly” estimate the costs of their job. The latest episode of the Knowledge Yatra was hosted at the hugely popular Printing Engineering college at Pune Vidyarthi Grah (PVG). More than 80 final-year students thronged to the lecture hall. While most of them are fresh with the basic knowledge on planning and workflow, they got a glimpse of the practical issues on the shop floor. With every chapter of Welbound’s Knowledge Yatra, it is work in progress, since the program is evolving in an attempt to address vital issues which are relevant to a book printer. Be it: planning, workflow, wastage, safety practices or estimation of costs. The Yatra shall continue because Welbound believes, “The love of books, like most loves, must be learned.” If you or your company or print association is keen to host a Knowledge Yatra in your city, you may contact Sajith at welbound@gmail.com

Many more domestic publishers are turning to adhesive binding aka perfect binding, as the preferred form of bookbinding. The increase in demand for educational books is putting pressure on existing capacities, across the country.  Many more domestic publishers are turning to adhesive binding aka perfect binding, as the preferred form of bookbinding. The increase in demand for educational books is putting pressure on existing capacities, across the country. In India, more than 250 million students attend schools and colleges. This has slowly but steadily seen the demand for books rising. This trend has been confirmed by many of the leading educational publishers and exercise notebook manufacturers. Leading book printers like Repro India Ltd have increased their adhesive binding capacities. Also, recent entrants like HT Burda Media Ltd, a joint venture between HT Media Ltd, India and Burda Druck GmbH have set up book binding plants that rival some of the European facilities. The company is in the news because it has bagged a 16 millon Euros printing contract with the exclusive printing partner with a French company for the next two years. This means printing of 100 million catalogues every year for the company’s three brands. HT Burda won the contract despite competitive pitching by printers from Italy, France and Germany. HTB will print 20 different types of catalogues. The company is in an advanced stage of negotiations with two large international retail brands for annual printing of 12 million catalogues. All this will require very high-end post press kit. And the point is, today companies like HT Media Ltd have realised this. Their independent venture into commercial print, have installed Welbound’s 12 clamp perfect binder and trimmers to supplement their high-end Manroland R700 HiPrint sheetfed press at their Noida plant. Likewise Repro India Ltd - the leading book printer exporter, installed a WB 3600–12 clamp perfect binder in addition to book binding lines from Europe. Temple Packaging Ltd., a leading specialty packaging converter, installed a  WB 3600 for pad-making at their Daman plant. Boom in notebook manufacturing I feel these are the recent trends which are emerging from the exercise notebook industry as well. This is a segment which is focused on delivering cost effective books, in the shortest duration possible. The new trend is to cover-paste the thread sewn books using adhesive binders – a process which will deliver flat books that are durable and aesthetically pleasing. The last three months witnessed a number of WB 2000s being installed up by exercise notebook manufacturers, in South, West and North India. Consider Mumbai’s Shah Book manufacturers (Prabhat), Paris Paper Mart and Vatican Paper Mart in Chennai , Majestik  Impex, Nadar Press and Micro Fine products in Madurai.Then there are ARS Stationers in Erode, Staple Paper Prodctus in Hyderabad, Cee Bee Book Manufacturing in Bengaluru. Also Pragati Siksha Bhawan – the Lucknow based stationery manufacturer, who installed a complete book manufacturing line in addition to a WB 2000.  Even though wire stitching is a cheaper and faster option to bind exercise notebooks, adhesive binding delivers safe and pin-free alternative. Better product branding is possible, given the larger and square spine. This method which is deployed for hard-cover exercise notebooks is popular in the rural markets. The demand for the single-clamp binder (specially designed for the notebook market) has been unprecedented. Educational Publishing on fast track The New Delhi capital region saw perfect binders installed by commercial printers as well as book printers. The publishing regions of both Meerut and Agra have seen a nod for WB 2000s in the last two months. North-based educational publishers like Jyoti Book Depot of Jalandhar installed their third WB 2000, while Malhotra Book Depot (MBD) picked their fifth. Sahitya Bhawan of Agra purchased their second WB2000 in three months. New Central Book Agency, the leading Book Publisher and Book Seller of Kolkata, who is a national leader in segments like medical books, bought a special model of WB2000 that can handle hefty books. Clearly, it is an exciting time. Watch this space for more information.

India is fast emerging as the leading market for educational publishing. The need to produce large quantity of books in short durations is putting a lot of pressure on bookbinding capacities. The objective of the WTS is to raise the efficiency and competence of Indian printers to match international standards, given the current environment.  Welbound Technical Services (WTS) is a brand independent initiative by Welbound to provide multi-level services to book printers. The aim is to raise “efficiency and competence of an Indian printer to match international standards.” Easier said than done? This is where WTS enters into the scenario. What started with an emphasis on training has been extended to ensure that a book printer’s business is profitable as well as competent.  To achieve this WTS broadly caters to a strategy which involves four critical aspects: Training Technology up-gradation Process integration Process audit Training: Case Study I WTS took up the task of improving the efficiency of a relocated perfect binding machine which was manufactured in Europe. The biggest worry for that particular printer (name withheld on request) was the output of 3000 books per hour as against its capacity of 7000 books per hour. Arvind Kalasur explaining a point to the production and maintenence team of Thomson Press,  Faridabad The task had begun with the director of WTS, Arvind Kalasur, taking charge of the operating and maintenance team that was assigned to the machine. It was spread over a period of 15 continuous days. The first step involved pointing out the inefficiencies that were occurring on the machine. The components were re-calibrated and the missing links bridged. These were perfected in presence of the two teams and their skill set was upgraded to further continue with optimum handling of the machine. It broadly involved understanding of the hardware and most importantly the critical electronic components which the operator is often wary of. The operator was made to understand that the machine cannot be looked upon as a “push button” device that will function on its own. If the machine reading displays a clamp opening of 10 mm then it has to be measured and calibrated if needed. This further culminated into an on-site training for the operating teams where they were made to utilise the machine while WTS monitored the process. WTS also upgraded the team with the maintenance aspect of the machinery, thus laying an emphasis on the fact that there should be an equal awareness about the requirement among both the operating as well as the maintenance team. This emphasis on awareness was extended to the production manager level on the final day where WTS presented an ideal workflow situation for book production right from the origin of the job to the final product. After having thoroughly focussed on the internal factors of book production, next step included an awareness of the external factors. A seminar was held for the team to understand basic technical aspects of the raw materials like adhesives and paper.It is here that WTS also marks a differentiation in the definition of quality. What gets perceived as “good quality” by the operators is at times different from the actual requirement. An increased involvement between the stakeholders at various stages of book production results into a better throughput. Technology up-gradation: Case study II A book printer from rural India had an international bid to fulfil with a quick turnaround time. The printer has a relatively high installed capacity to produce hotmelt perfectbound (un-sewn) books. However, the international order required the books to be produced by PUR. When the book printer approached WTS, its team first visited the manufacturing site to check the conditions. As Dinesh Ingawale of WTS states “PUR binding capability can be achieved with a well maintained machine, workflow and manpower trained to understand the specific requirements of the process. Here was a case of preparing a pre-owned German perfect binder with built in PUR applicator to produce books in an environment without any experience to do so.” The installation of this pre-owned machine involved a close look at the wear and tear components as any problems related to clamping and milling would lead to disastrous results. The next step involved training and education on the PUR technology to the workforce that would be handling the machine. The machine was put into production by the WTS team and monitored till the operators were ready and confident. Process integration: Case Study III A book printer with an international repute opted for a used perfect binding line from Europe. The printer got WTS on board which installed the machine. WTS then put the machine into trial mode and prepared a chart of replacement of parts and the missing links that were required to achieve an efficient inline system. The automation levels of the machinery were upgraded based on the specific requirements of the printer. On bridging the missing links Suresh Nair of WTS states, “There are times when even a high-end machine is not able to match your productivity and quality requirements. We have the expertise and the complete technical knowledge to understand the gaps and suggest the most cost effective solutions.” The challenge was to get closer to the rated capacity of the machine: this meant that all the issues seen while commissioning needed to be addressed in a time bound manner. The operators and maintenance engineers were given comprehensive training on the upkeep of the machine. WTS intends to monitor the progress through regular follow-ups. Suresh Nair provides training on machine settings and tracing problems. Process audit: Case Study IV There are instances when a book printer heavily invests in plant & machinery as well as software systems and is yet not able to enhance productivity and quality. There are often gaps in planning, skills and coordination that leads to this scenario. The WTS process audit involves thorough evaluation of all parameters like manpower, organisation, system, process, enterprise, and product. Currently WTS has undertaken the process audit of one such book printer. For this, WTS personnel parked themselves at the printer’s base. They observed the procedures, took various interviews – right from the owner to the operator, collected information, viewpoints and the perceptions. This was categorised under three broad objectives of process control, capacity planning and automation. WTS trickled down to these three objective after a careful and detailed study of successful organisations. The software and systems of production planning captures most of the data and reports information on daily production, make-ready of jobs, work in progress and so on. However these do not provide a feedback on where things are going wrong. WTS studies these ground realities and prepares a road map for improvement that includes up-gradation of skill set and better coordination at the plant level. WTS makes the printer fully aware of the findings and inefficiencies which included hidden costs through wastage and rejection.  

Manu Chowdhary of CDC with Wohlenberg Lucro 5000 inline binder CDC Printers of Kolkata have already established a name for themselves as an award winning printer of Annual Reports. Their commercial printing unit has a battery of Heidelberg multi colour machines and bindery including perfectbinders and trimmers from Welbound. When they decided to put up a greenfield project to produce one hundred thousand soft cover books per day, they decided to rely on the expertise and support of Welbound. Chittaranjan Chowdhary, the managing director of CDC put the final touches to the deal to buy a Wohlenberg Lucro . He had earlier visited the Welbound factory at Thiruvananthapuram to see the machine in action. He said, “I could see government textbooks, with not-so-great quality paper and cover stock being bound to perfection, on a pallet of more than 4,500 books per hour. The machine has a smaller foot print and is very energy efficient. The special vacuum technology used by Wohlenberg ensures difficult signatures being gathered, efficiently. Wohlenberg’s Lucro is the answer to need of book printers in countries like India, to have a robust and beneficial solution for high speed book production. The proven German technology is adapted to include features that will sustain the stress of not-so-ideal working conditions: be it the quality of substrate, the operator know-how, electrical stability and so on. Lucro combines the strength of the proven efficiency of the Sprinter gatherer and the City binder, with sensible and essential automation, that is foolproof. The Sprinter is a high speed automated gatherer that can run at speeds upto 8000 books per hour, offline. It uses the patented Winjector technology that is quicker, more efficient and energy saving. The direct shaft-drive of the gatherer, without chains, ensures zero transmission loss of motion. The gathering and transportation of signatures is vertical, thereby avoiding additional elements for straightening prior to entry into the binder : again an example of saving on space and energy. Wohlenberg Lucro follows the lineage of the Wohlenberg binders that stand out for their smart and economic use of space and energy. For a 5000 books per hour machine, Lucro requires the lowest foot print and consumes the minimum of energy.

L-R, Sunil Pandita and Ajay Madan of HT Media HT media is one the oldest and largest media houses in India. HT Media has interests across the media of print, television, radio and internet.Hindustan Times, the flagship English newspaper of the group, along with Hindustan in Hindi, have a combined daily readership of over 12 million. HT Media operates 19 print facilities spread across the country. They also have a  51:49 joint venture with Hubert Burda Druck GmbH of  Germany. They have set up bookbinding plants that rival some of the European facilities. Last year the company was in the news for bagging a 16 millon Euros printing contract with the French company Outiror for the next two years. This means printing of 100 million catalogues every year for the company’s three brands. HT Burda won the contract despite competitive pitching by printers from Italy, France and Germany. HTB will print 20 different types of catalogues. The company is in an advanced stage of negotiations with two large international retail brands for annual printing of 12 million catalogues. HT Media has a full fledged commercial print facility, in addition to the news paper printing, at Greater Noida. They have installed Welbound’s 12 clamp perfect binder and trimmers to supplement their high-end Manroland R700 HiPrint sheetfed press at their Noida plant.

Chhotubhai Shah, Jayant Prints N Pack with Pickwel Jayant Prints N Pack is one of the fastest growing print unit in Western India.  They had a humble beginning, way back in 1968, when they started with a treadle press in an area of 220 sq ft  in Thakurdwar, Mumbai. Today the sprawling 45,000 sq-ft plant in Palghar produces and exports books.  Jayant Prints handles a wide range of segments within book printing. These include children's activity books (like colouring books, magic books); educational books (textbooks and guides); answering books for various universities and magazines. They have 8 multi colour sheet fed presses (mainly Heidelberg) and about 5 web presses with varying configurations.  This is well backed by a state of the art pre-press and modern book bindery.  The company’s relationship with Welbound began when the promoter, Chhotubhai Shah procured a single-clamp binder which augmented the investment in a brand-new Heidelberg PM 74 in 2008. This was followed with a WB 2000 in 2009; and now the Pickwel. The twelve station gatherer was installed in October 2010. According to Shashank Shah, Jayant Print will focus in book print exports; the post-press equipment from Welbound will support the company’s efficiency drive. Today Jayant Print exports book print services to UK, USA and to many African countries.

India's first high speed PUR perfect binder launched at PrintPack India 201 One of the key issues challenging the book printing industry in India is the necessity to thread-sew book blocks before cover pasting. For example: thick books, diaries, book-blocks for hardcover binding. However this leads to inordinate delays in delivering the book to the market.  At the moment, thread sewing is the only bottle-neck in bookbinding. Welbound realised that Polyurethane Reactive (PUR) hotmelts is the only solution for such jobs. PUR, as we know, needs controlled environment, machines, applicators and know-how. For this, they tied up with the world leaders in this technology - Henkel Adhesives and Robatech AG.  At Printpack 2011, Pragti Maidan, New Delhi India's first high speed PUR Perfect Binder WB 3600 was demonstrated - producing annual diaries. The product- annual diaries are a challenge when it comes to testing the binding durability. That is the reason, book-blocks are produced through a complex process involving thread sewing, reinforcing and the list goes on. Hence this was made as a test case for PUR perfect binding, eliminating sewing. PUR has been chosen over standard hot melt adhesives for many reasons—with superior adhesion and lay-flat, being the most important ones. There are other benefits too: high heat and cold resistance, less wrinkle on backbone, solvent resistance to name a few. In comparison to thread sewing a job first and then pasting a cover - PUR takes much less turn around time, at lower costs. Welbound offers 2 solutions for PUR perfect binding. (1) A single clamp binder with a Robapress pre-melt tank that can hold and dispense PUR into an open pot and (2) the WB3600 with nozzle applicator and Robatech MOD 4 dispensing system. According to K C Sanjeev, the managing director of Welbound Worldwide "The response at Printpack was unprecedented. We have not seen such a huge interest in any technology in post press, so far in India. The educational publishers are pleased that they can have ready to market books, in much shorted turn around time. The commercial printers are happy that they can print their brochures and books with ink or coatings spread on to the spine. Coffee table books can now be produced completely lay flat". At the exhibition, the orders for the single clamp were more than the expectations. Welbound intends to work closely with publishers and printers in order to make them adapt the new technology, easily.This would involve placing the PUR machines at strategic locations for trials. "We would run actual jobs and guarantee the durability of binding. Only live trials can give the confidence to the publishers and printers" Says Suresh Nair, the Regional Manager of Welbound North, who also will be responsible for training on the PUR application technology. 

Welbound Worldwide shall officially launch the fourth edition of  Tony Clark's Book Binding with Adhesives during PrintPack 2011 at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi. Tony Clark is known to readers of Welbound Times. He is renowned for his seminars, training sessions and plant audits. Tony Clark is known to readers of Welbound Times. He is renowned for his seminars, training sessions and plant audits. Clark has completed 45 years of engagement in adhesive development - during which he specialised in unsewn binding with hotmelt and PUR. He developed a notebook like tensile page pull device. These days, he is a corporate quality control manager who deploys this unique testing device into every binding facility. But above all, he is renowned for his classic book on post-press operation, Book Binding with Adhesives. The book was out of print. In fact whenever someone from the Indian print community wanted to source a copy - it drew a blank. The good news is, Welbound Worldwide is publishing the fourth edition of Book Binding with Adhesives. Werner Rebsamen, the world famous bookbinding scientist and teacher, rates Clark's book very highly: " Tony Clark has seen too many failures related to adhesive binding and in the 1980’s decided to publish a book on that particular subject. This was  to help hard-working operators down in the trenches, to solve their everyday adhesive / perfect binding problems. He left no subject out and covered it all – paper grain-direction, poor signature handling, spine preparations, one and two shot applications, book-testing and best of all, 26 pages of fault-finding illustrations and description. Wherever I had the pleasure to share my knowledge in foreign countries, no matter if they spoke Spanish or Chinese, I was able to pin-point faults, all thanks to Tony Clark's book and its great illustrations." According to Anil Krishna, the CEO and GM of HenkelCACPvt Ltd this book has been a great help in understanding adhesive binding. He says: "In very simple language, with the help of minimum words and more pictures, the author explains the basics of adhesives, bookbinding — and then going on to describe the new trends in technology. What has hugely helped me and many others in my team as well as customers — is the trouble shooting section. Till such time, when the pressures in managing a 100 plus team took me away from the day to day field trials, the book used to be my constant travel companion." Henkel, the world's largest adhesive manufacturers has supported this venture to spread the knowledge by making it more affordable and accessible. Jak Printers, the award winning printer from Mumbai is the print-partner for this project. The book cover was designed by G V Srikumar of Industrial Design Centre, IIT (Mumbai). The fourth edition has been edited by RamuRamanathan, editor of PrintWeek India.  

Shri Bholaji of Rave India is seen receiving a copy of the "Bookbinding with Adhesives" - by Tony Clark, from K C Sanjeev Rave India, the leading commercial and book printing company based in New Delhi has two factories in the print - hub of Nariana Industrial estate. They are on an expansion spree and to meet their growing demands has added additional capacity at a new plant in Gurgaon. Rave has always trusted brand new equipments - be it for printing or post-press. Welbound has been their preferred supplier for bookbinding machines, since the time they enetered book printing. Rave invested in 2 Numbers of WB 2000 - 6 clamp binders and a single clamp, at the Naraina facility. At Gurgaon, Rave has gone in for the Trident E 20 three knife trimmer. This will cater to their requirement of trimming soft cover books and book blocks.

The senior management of Orient Blackswan A session of Welbound Knowledge Yatra was hosted at the corporate headquarters of the country’s leading educational publishers – Orient Blackswan Pvt Ltd (OB). This was attended by the Directors of Sales, Finance and Editorial, Vice President Production and their Production Officers from Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai. These presentations had a user perspective; in order to make it relevant to the ‘print buyer'. The planning team at OBL felt they should pay a bit more attention on the procurement of text and cover paper, especially related to grain direction. They discussed the unrealistic pressures on production since a very short time is available between planning to delivery. After the session, J Krishnadev Rao, Director Finance of Orient Blackswan seemed pleased: “Welbound provided us with a very educative, interactive session on issues related to adhesive binding”

K C Sanjeev, Managing Director, Welbound Worldwide PrintWeek India's Noel interviewed Sanjeev, the CMD of Welbound Worldwide. In this interview Sanjeev straight talks about his compnay's priorities, vision and the status of print industry in India. ND:     A basic profile of your company and manufacturing centre KCS : We manufacture the critical links in the bookbinding workflow, starting from folding machines to trimmers.  Our products have no structural similarities and the only common factor is the customer. As these products require different plant and machineries (as well as skill sets) to manufacture, we have separate product specific plants. These are located in Trivandrum, Chengannur and Thodupuzha in Kerala. Then we have a state of the art foundry and component manufacturing centre at Coimbatore. Each plant is run independently by experienced professionals; we have a young workforce with average age hovering about 26. Our human resource is predominantly technical; we are 300 plus strong at the factories and about 80 in sales and service. ND:     What are the key megatrends in your company that have benefited the Indian print industry? KCS: We have greatly influenced the automation of bookbinding in India. By providing cost effective solutions we de-bottlenecked the issues that delayed the release of books. The traditional ‘small binder’ didn’t own any machine other than a ubiquitous ‘cutting machine’, before they invested in our single clamp perfectbinder. What welbound did was the ‘last mile automation’ that solved a lot of issues. A major share of textbooks in India is perfectbound and thus delivered on time, thanks to our efforts in spreading the awareness on the technology.  ND:      Is your company a rule maker or a rule follower? Please elucidate. KCS: During our 22 years of existence, we have done many unprecedented things in our industry, in India. The rule was to manufacture and then distribute through agents –we didn’t follow this. The rule was never to mix the sales of capital equipments and consumables – we did exactly this and called it extended services. The rule was to supply machines and leave it to third party agents or individuals to support these, post warranty – annual maintenance contracts were unheard of in our industry; again we broke the rule. Be it in educating our buyers on application technology, coordinating with their (print) buyers, providing auxiliary tools to improve their processes, we have always tried to do things which have been traditionally scorned at as “not our job”. I do not know if we were making the rules or breaking them, but we enjoy doing these. ND:    Today, market boundaries are changing ever more quickly, targets are elusive and market capture is at best temporary. A few companies have proven themselves adept at inventing new markets, quickly entering emerging markets, and dramatically shifting patterns of customer choice in established markets. How does one emulate such companies? KCS: We have been majorly an India centric company. The Indian market for Print and specially books is quite large in comparison to many of the other markets where our products are accepted. We have retained a very healthy majority market share in adhesive binding since 1996. We understood that it is very difficult to grow your market share when you are in such a dominant position – so we always worked at expanding the markets. Even today an installation of an entry model of perfect binder, in say, Beawer or Imphal is cheered more, in comparison to a big ticket installation in Delhi. If the companies stop believing in them as mere manufacturers or suppliers of services, and instead believe in them being part of larger picture – in our case Education; then there is nothing that can stop them. ND:     Benchmarking best practices allows enterprises to catch up with the competition, but it won't turn them into market leaders. Do you agree or no? Why? KCS: The answer lies in the question itself: benchmarking is following the leader. Having said that, benchmarking does not prevent you from creating a base, setting new standards and taking a leadership position. Following the best practices that are widely acknowledged as successful, one is accelerating his position to the leadership. ND:     What do you believe is the most under-recognised aspect in Indian printing that is likely to become important in the next decade? KCS:  We Indians have been out-of-the-box thinkers and it is no different with the print industry as well. We also do have sufficient manpower that just needs to be trained to think differently. The technology in print has thrown up a great number of options and the west will follow whatever is less dependent on manpower. That does not mean the other options do not create business opportunities – IT industry is a defining example. It is for us to jump at this opportunity and do something similar to what our IT industry did in the 90s. ND: What does Green mean to you? According to you what should the Green model in the print industry resemble? KCS: To me, Green means what the colour symbolizes: life, nature, fertility, well being and future. Print industry has no parallels because no other industry uses so many engineering technologies in one go – be it electronics, electrical, mechanical, chemical and a number of specialization (sub-set) technologies. So it is a colossal task to be green at each stage. We can start by focusing on recycled or FSC certified paper, organic inks, reduced waste and resource usage, elimination or safer disposal of toxic or harmful by-products. The print buyers will have a large role to play in making the industry go green.    ND:     When you get stuck in a business deal or a project ... how do dead-ends become new paths? KCS : When we embark on a new project, we will have one of us leading a group that is focused on making the project a success. We will also have a smaller group, which works on a contrarian scenario. For example we start with the assumption that a certain product will have an extremely good market and the returns on investment will be handsome. The contrarian group assumes that if it’s something ‘that’ attractive, then everyone would know this. Hence they will go about projecting the future earnings, assuming stiffer competition. They will also propose ‘difficult-to-achieve scenarios’ that can give an edge to our offer. This helps us exploring either new or different paths. So there are no dead-ends, but always new paths. We have been able to achieve this because of an open organizational structure that encourages dissent and alternative thinking. ND:     A lot of print companies have been struggling to cut costs. Most of them are discovering the hard way that they have for too long put up with too much redundant and wasteful activity. How do you mandate cost reductions and set targets? KCS: Costs can be reduced only if you understand costs. So the first step would be to understand the components of your costs, as they are. Printing in India, calculates its cost per unit without any scientific justification. If you track any other industry, costs are always calculated in relation to time – to be converted later to per unit or per quantity. So before starting to cut one’s perceived costs, he or she needs to understand how to calculate costs. When one does this, it will throw up very interesting facts: like for example ‘labour’ is the single largest component of cost in any stage in bookbinding. Such revelations will also provide you with answers on how to be cost-efficient. ND: What will your company do differently in 2010? KCS: A lot of emphasis will go into empowering all the stake holders – publishers, printers, binders, operators and our own team- with more knowledge. Be it on application technology, work flow management, MIS, business development and marketing. We are part of a value chain in which a school going child is at the top. To provide him or her with a ‘smart book’ that in content, usability and visibility will be ‘far superior’ is the single point agenda for us. This will involve the schools, publishers, printers-binders, consumable suppliers and manufacturers like us. We recognize that there is enormous need to deliver more value to that child and in the process, realize better value. 

Madan Pauriyal, Personal Graphics Personal Graphics and Advertisers is a private limited company, in Okhla and is run by Madan Pauriyal and Braj Vihari Sharma. Madan had worked in a number if MNCs in marketing and advertising before venturing into print. Their relationship with Welbound began with a single clamp binder installed in 2004, at their unit in Okhla Ind area. This machine helped them establish a name in book printing. They targeted niche areas like 'guides for competitive exams', which demanded that books are produced in a very short interval. The requirement of perfect bound books went up quite fast. The single clamp was put into a 24 X 7 usage and still the demand could not be met. The key stumbling block was that their bindery was in the basement, with a narrow door, (typical of many bookbinding units in Okhla) and a big machine could not be taken through the door, easily. Welbound took this as a challenge - the WB 2000 was brought to their door from Kerala, completely dismantled, taken down through the narrow door, steps and re-assembled.That was out of the box thinking.  The enhanced capacity in binding put stress on printing, and more so on space. This made Madan and Braj Vihari to shift their complete operations to a new building in Okhla, about 15000 sq ft in area. They replaced a couple of printing machines, with younger models.Faster machines meant more signatures to convert - demanding a faster and accurate folding system. Also, the perfect binder churned out roughly 15000 books a day, which could not be trimmed using a guillotine accurately. "We had complete faith in Welbound - in their products, services and above all - ability to support our specific needs to address not-so-normal-constraints", says Madan. This resulted in investments in a Diploma folder and Trident trimmer, from the Welbound Family. "The personal attention given by Madan and Braj Vihari to their customers, their willingness too work hard, as well as meeting their commitments - all these meant that their customers diverted more jobs to them - putting more pressure on their capacities" Says Sanil Kumar, Area Sales Manager - Delhi of Welbound.

Diploma has been making an impact across the length of Kerala with high print density - be it St Francis Press in Kochi or Kairali Offset Printers at Kozhikode. St Francis Press: It was in the year 1926 the Late Mr. Thomas J. Putherical incepted St. Francis Press to print religious books on a simple hand treadle press. Before long educational books were also printed by him to cater the needs of the community in Kochi. Stationery articles were also manufactured during this time. They were quick to get into offfset and early 80s saw a brand new Heidelberg offset being imported. Now they have a number of sheetfed printing presses, adequately supported by the post press. Rajan of St Francis is an Engineer by profession and has been actively involved with the Master Printers Association. They also have invested in a single clamp Perfect Binder from Welbound. Koppara Enterprises, a Kollam-based printer, recently installed a Diploma 4z3x automatic folder, Pickwel 12-station automatic gatherer, a Wb 2000 Perfectbinder and E-15 three knife trimmer, the complete family of binding machines from Welbound. In fact, Koppara Enterprises, were the first printers from Kerala to invest in a brand new Heidelberg GTO, which was then followed up with an investment in a Suprasetter thermal CTP. They were also the first printers in the State to invest in a brand new thread sewing machine from Mecanotechnica Srl of Italy. In fact, most credit for this goes to Rajeev Ramakrishnan, the young managing director of Koppara Enterprises, who has been making the right investments to establish a state-of-the-art offset printing unit. This successful business consultant, based in Dubai, developed a typewriting institute started by his late father into a complete print unit, offering digital, screen and offset print services. Thushara Binding is a sister concern of Kairali Offset Kozhikode. They have two large format presses mainly employed for books and diary printing. The bindery also has a Welbound Single clamp perfect binder. According to Sajith Kumar, the Area Sales manager of Welbound, Kerala, this year should see more folders getting installed, across the state

The figures of book print export of countries with more share than India (Source - Wits UN-Comtrade Database, HS-2002) (as per 2009 data)   Exporter     Million USD     European Union 6551.34 Germany 5742.66 United States 5462.31 United Kingdom 3779.59 China 2361.99 France   2135.44  China 1721.76  Italy 1703.11 Thailand   1565.25  Belgium     1434.70 Netherlands 1329.25 Czech Republic 1166.96 Canada 992.31 Singapore 895.38 Japan 802.95 Switzerland 714.09 Austria 581.19 Zimbabwe  435.46 Honduras 368.06 Mexico   365.28 Russian Fed 341.94 Sweden   341.35 UAE  313.46 Denmark 286.30 Korea, Rep. 250.76 Finland 238.25 Malaysia  225.05 Australia 222.73 India   217.05     Errors expected        

The (3rd) annual issue of PrintWeek India is out in the market. This issue carries a special supplement called "Print Power". The most powerful CEOs in the Indian print industry were given a questionnaire to respond : to understand what makes them tick.  The answers reflect the spirit of (small scale) entreprenuership, what they like & dislike about the industry and what they would like to change.. Click here to download the Q & A with K C Sanjeev  

The Annual Supplement 2010-11 to the Foreign Trade Policy (FTP) was announced by the Hon’ble Commerce & Industry Minister Mr. Anand Sharma in New Delhi on 23rd August 2010.  In the Annual Supplement, the Hon’ble Minister has considered various suggestions of Councils/Industry.  Major suggestions that relates to Books, Publications & Printing etc.,  considered are:   1. Continuation of DEPB Scheme 2. Extension of Technological Up gradation Scheme 3. Extension of SHIS Scheme 4. Extension of Zero Duty EPCG Scheme, etc. DEPB (a) The Duty Entitlement Passbook (DEPB) extended beyond 31.12.2010 till 30.6.2011. (b) DEPB rate shall also include factoring of Customs Duty component on fuel where fuel is allowed as a consumable in standard input-output norm. TECHNOLOGICAL UPGRADATION To aid technological up gradation of export sector, EPCG Scheme at Zero Duty has been introduced.  This Scheme will be available for Chemicals & Allied Products including Paper & Paperboard and articles thereof, Ceramic products, Refractories, Glass & Glassware, Rubber and articles thereof, Plywood and Allied Products beside other items.  The Scheme shall be in operation till 31.3.2011.  Para 5.8. chapter 5 of FTP states as follows: EPCG authorization  holders can opt for technology  up gradation of existing capital  goods imported under EPCG authorization . Conditions governing technological Up gradation  of existing capital  goods are as under : I. Minimum time period for applying for Technological up gradation of existing  capital goods imported under EPCG is 5 Years from    Authorization issue date II. Minimum  exports made under old capital goods must be 40% of total  export obligation  imposed on first EPCG authorization  III. Export obligation  would be re-fixed such that total exports obligation mandated for both capital goods would be sum  total of 6  time  of duty saved on both capital      goods, to be fulfilled in 8 years from new  authorization  issued date  IV. Facility for technological up gradation  shall be available only once and  the minimum  imports to be made shall be at least 10%  of the existing  investment in plant  and machinery by applicant  V. Capital  Goods to be imported must be new and technologically  superior to earlier  CG STATUS HOLDER INCENTIVE SCHEME The Status Holder of the additional sectors like Books, Publications and Printing (Chapter 49) shall be eligible for incentive of 1% of fob value of Export made during 2010-11 and 2011-12 in the form of duty credit.   ZERO DUTY EPCG SCHEME Introduced in August 2009 and valid for only two years upto 31.3.2011 has been extended by one more year till 31.3.2012.

India's first National Book Printers conference will be hosted between 17 to 19 November at Thiruvanthapuram in Kerala. According to P Sajith, Welbound Worldwide: "The conference will take a big step towards making India the largest book print exporter by 2017. According to P Sajith, Welbound Worldwide: "The conference will take a big step towards making India the largest book print exporter by 2017." The three-day event is being supported by Welbound and Henkel CAC India. PrintWeek India will be the knowledge partner for the event. The three day event will consist of knowledge seminars and panel discussions which has been conceptualised by PrintWeek India. Professor Werner Rebsamen will be the keynote speaker on day one of the event. Key post-press suppliers will be providing innovative technological solutions during the conference. CEOs of 200 book printers in India, key publishers, heads of textbook corporations, government representatives will be present at this event which will be hosted at Hotel Udaya Samudra. Sajith said: "The conference will include a panel discussion which shall consist top book-print exporters from India. Discussions will be based on their real-time work-experiences of what they see as challenges and solutions in making India the largest book print hub for exports. The discussion will create an interest group." Technical experts from Wohlenberg bookbinding and cutting systems, Guk folding machines from Germany; Robatech AG from Switzerland; Tecnograf from Italy and Baumann paper handling equipment will make presentations. In addition, international gurus in bookbinding such as Werner Rebsamen, professor Emeritus of RIT (USA); and Tony Clark, the author of Bookbinding with Adhesives will demystify book binding techniques. Besides the conference, the three day conference will include factory visits and demonstration of a range of products from Welbound. This will include a factory visit of Welbound's book production gallery, where a series of machines and processes will be displayed producing different types of books. In addition, delegates will see perfect binders from Welbound and Wohlenberg, automatic folding machines with inline gluing, VDP, counting, pressing and stacking, saddle stitching lines, technology of stitching heads, PUR technology, programs for operational efficiency enhancement of binderies and Wohlenberg cutting systems. Furthermore Henkel will showcase solutions of HMA, PSHMA, WBA, PUR at the stalls located in the factory. For further information, send an eMail to:welbound@gmail.comcontact@haymarket.co.inprint.conference@in.henkel.com

K C Sanjeev receiving the "best entrepreneur" award Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation celebrated its Golden jubilee year on 30 July in Cochin. The program was inaugurated by the Chief Minister of Kerala, Sri Oommen Chandy . The Minister for Industries, Sri Kunjalikutty presided the function Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation celebrated its Golden jubilee year on 30 July in Cochin. The program was inaugurated by the Chief Minister of Kerala, Sri Oommen Chandy. The Minister for Industries, Sri Kunjalikutty presided the function. Various state and central secretaries graced the occasion. KSDIC used this opportunity to facilitate the industry leaders from the state of Kerala. K C Sanjeev, the Chairman and Managing Director of Welbound group was presented the "Best Entrepreneur Award"

L - Shri K C Goel, President DBA,  addresing the audience . Ingawale (R) is also seen The members of Delhi Bookbinders Association (DBA), the apex body of 400 plus bookbinders in the National Capital Region were introduced to the methods of scientific calculation of costs by Dinesh Ingawale of Welbound. The seminar was organised by Welbound at Urdu Bhawan in New Delhi. K C Goel, President of the DBA says “bookbinding in New Delhi is like a cottage industry and offers employment to tens of thousands of people. The whole existence of this industry is at stake now as input costs have been going up in double digits; while the price-realisation is coming down. One of the key reasons is the fact that unlike many other business models, book binding does not estimate costs on a real time or hourly basis. Historic and empirical methods like issuing quotes per signature and per book are still followed. Many of us are not making profits in most of the jobs we do. It cannot go on like this and that is why we requested Welbound to conduct such a seminar”. Dinesh’s presentation focussed on 4 key aspects: Understanding costing Uncovering the myths of costing Analysing costs using simple tools How to remain competitive The jargons of costing and the methodology of estimation were explained in simple terms with examples from day to day life. Costing of two typical jobs an A4 book of 200 pages and another book of 1000 pages were analysed. Ingawale used a simple, MS Excel based estimator developed by him, to estimate the costs of these books, given different scenarios of capacities of the unit. These values were then compared with the price quoted by the binders. In most of the cases, the “profit” word was missing. Dinesh explained the danger of estimating costs based on number of signatures. Given a certain investment on plant, machinery and variable costs related to the job like labour, adhesive, thread, electricity and so on the cost of a certain job is entirely on the efficiency with which it is turned around. Two different books of same size and number of pages may take different turn around times, based on difficulty of the substrate, lot size etc and hence will have differing costs. In order to arrive at the costing for any typical job, it is important to consider these variables or else one will end up loosing money. Members of Delhi Binder's Association at the seminar on costing Many of the binders present in the seminar agreed that they did not consider any administrative overheads like their own salary or rent while calculating the costs. Ingawale showed the impact of not considering these costs with the help of a live demo of the basic estimating tool.  The bookbinders were in unison while discussing the sharp increase of costs in the last two years, be it labour, fuel, energy and consumable. Labour being the single largest component of costs of bookbinding, the increase seen in the last two years has literally taken away any profits left. Ingawale concluded his seminar with pointers on reducing wastage and adapting best practises so as to remain competitive in these tough times. Arun Berry, the president of Delhi Printers Association (DPA), who was the chief guest at the seminar, spoke at length regarding the need to realise value for the services rendered. He also stressed the need to adopt best practises.  The seminar on costing by Welbound is a Welbound Technical Services (WTS) initiative to provide information to the trade on business and technology.  

That Tony Clark’s Bookbinding with adhesives will be made available is the best news in over a decade. Tony, like myself, grew-up in this industry when bookbinders used only pastes and protein adhesives to hold the books. That Tony Clark’s Bookbinding with adhesives will be made available is the best news in over a decade. Tony, like myself, grew-up in this industry when bookbinders used only pastes and protein adhesives to hold the books. When the first water-based, white polyvinyl acetate adhesives arrived in the 1950s, we had to learn new ‘tricks’. In the mid 1960s, we started perfect binding books and catalogs with a new, hot adhesive called hotmelt. As bookbinders, we always used to test the viscosity of protein glues between our fingers. Some old-timers tried that particular trick with hotmelt, only once! Those first perfect bound books bound with hotmelt did not last. Some of these early adhesive formulations disintegrated within a year or two. The big break-through came in 1969 with the EVA hotmelt adhesives. But as it is with new technologies, we, the edition bookbinders, were not allowed to use hotmelts for binding hardcover bound books, they all had to be sewn through the fold!  When I joined RIT (1974) and became a full-time educator in print finishing and bookbinding, good teaching material was virtually non-existent. Luckily, in 1971, my Swiss colleague Alfred Furler published a book on The Technology of Adhesive Binding. It did help me but what about the rest of the world who did not understand German? The best education we received on all aspects of adhesive binding were shared by technical representatives. They conducted in-plant technical seminars. Tony Clark, working as an adhesive binding chemist for National Starch was a technical guru. He has seen failures. Therefore in the 1980s, he decided to publish a book on the subject. This is to help hard-working operators, to solve their adhesive / perfect binding problems. He covered it all – paper grain-direction, poor signature handling, spine preparations, one and two shot applications, book-testing and best of all, 26 pages of fault-finding illustrations and description. Wherever I had to share my knowledge in foreign countries, no matter if they spoke Spanish or Chinese, I was able to pin-point faults, thanks to Clark’s book and its great illustrations.

P Narendra of Pragati receiving the book printer of the year award for 2009 edition PrintWeek India  launched the third edition of its Awards event on 25 March, 2011. Enquiries have been pouring in for the 24 categories. The new deadline for sending entries is 25 June. The judging for the Awards will take place on 29 July 2011 and the Awards Night on 25 August 2011. As in the previous two editions, a select panel of jury comprising of print customers and experts will evaluate print entries in 24 categories. Priya Iyer, group advertising manager for PrintWeek India stated: "Participating print firms have already started to collate and create the best print samples for the Awards. There are several categories to enter and the work of the winning print companies work will feature in PrintWeek India’s Book of the Night 2011 which will be launched at the grand event of the Awards night." Major print firms for PrintWeek India Awards 2010Canon, the main sponsors of the Awards for the first two edition, reinstated their faith for the third edition as well. Similarly, Bobst, Welbound, AGS, X-rite, Digital Information Ink Zone, GMC and Grafica have confirmed sponsorship for various Awards 2011 categories. have come on board for the third edition in 2011. Welbound has been associated with the PrintWeek India awards from its inception. Click here to download entry form for PrintWeek India Awards 2011 For details about entries: Neha Pandey: neha@haymarket.co.in

L-R, Suhas kulkarni and Pradeep Shinde with WB2000 Aurangabad, an important district in the state of Maharashtra, is better known for the world famous Ajanta and Ellora Caves. Due to these two Unesco world heritage sites, Aurangabad is often called the tourism capital of Maharashtra. Aurangabad, an important district in the state of Maharashtra, is better known for the world famous Ajanta and Ellora Caves. Due to these two Unesco world heritage sites, Aurangabad is often called the tourism capital of Maharashtra. Aurangabad has many polytechnic and industrial training institutes, which not only offer education in engineering technology but also specialized courses such as Food Technology, Nursing, Crafts, Animation, etc. The Institute of Aircraft Maintenance Engineering, one of the specialized institutes in avionics is in Aurangabad. The Marathwada auto cluster in this city houses well known automobile manufacturers like Volkswagen, Audi and Skoda. However despite the thriving tourism industry and the vibrant educational market, there was hardly any print industry, back in early 90s. The dependence on the more developed 'Pune', was quite high. All this changed, thanks to a duo of  Suhas Kulkarni and Pradeep Shinde. They used to play for the same cricket team; and at some point decided to set up a good print set up in their home town. They started up with a DTP unit called - Pagesetters and later went on to printing and binding. The initial focus was on textbook printing and the volumes offered by the Maharashtra State text book corporation helped them in their formative years. The printing was mainly on web offset machines and the bindery had two single clamp perfect binders from Welbound. Printwell decided to think big and invested in a 4 colour machine. The encouragement from the market saw them following this up with one more. Today Printwell International has a battery of sheetfed and web offset presses, backed up by a strong pre-press and post press. They cater to the commercial print, educational publishing and local requirements of packaging. They have also forayed into the international market with participation in various book fairs. In addition to the single clamp binders and a WB 2000, Printwell also has the Trident 3 knife trimmer from the welbound family. In the march 2011, they went in for one more WB 2000 to cater to the increased demand in educational books printing. Today there are many print companies of varying sizes that have come up in Aurangabad, thanks to the inspiration from Printwell. Pradeep Shinde feels proud, when customers from Pune come to their office for printing; and there are many such days in his calender.

 Sanjay Roy, Repro India Ltd with WB3600 Repro India Ltd is India's largest producer of education books. In addition to the large market in India, they also export to 14 African countries, EU and the US. They provide the complete range of book-print solutions be it digital, sheet fed or web. Repro India Ltd is India's largest producer of education books. In addition to the large market in India, they also export to 14 African countries, EU and the US. They provide the complete range of book-print solutions be it digital, sheet fed or web. They have two integrated book plants - one at Navi Mumbai and the other at Surat SEZ Both plants have a number of machines from Welbound, India's largest supplier of bookbinding machines and services.  They have a WB 3600 - 12 clamp perfect binder installed in the Surat plant. This is in addition to a 7000 bph bookbinding line from Europe. Welbound has supplied the complete offline solution - including the gatherer, perfect binder and Trident 3 knife trimmer. Repro's Navi Mumbai has a battery of WB 2000 - 6 clamp perfect binders, in addition to Pickwel gatherer.

  As per search at FFB website: Trade: Printing & Manufacturing | Land: India       Company City / Town Country Status Booth 2011 Details . DC Books   Kottayam, Kerala India Exhibitor 2011  Hall 5.0 D900 . Goodword Books (Pvt.) Ltd.   New Delhi India Exhibitor 2011  Hall 3.1 F112   . Gopsons Papers Ltd.   Noida India Exhibitor 2011  Hall 5.0 D921 . International Print-o-Pac Limited (IPP)   Noida India Exhibitor 2011  Hall 5.0 D917 . Manipal Technologies Ltd.   Manipal India Exhibitor 2011  Hall 5.0 D901 . Mexus Education (Pvt.) Ltd.   Mumbai India Exhibitor 2011  Hall 4.2 C1434, Primary stand . Niyogi Books   New Delhi India Exhibitor 2011  Hall 5.0 D912 . Nutech Print Services   New Delhi India Exhibitor 2011  Hall 5.0 D924 . Replika Press (Pvt.) Ltd.   Haryana India Exhibitor 2011  Hall 5.0 D913 . Srinivas Fine Arts   Sivakasi India Exhibitor 2011  Hall 4.0 B1302          

The top 15 books and book print services ( Commodity code 49 of the United Nations Commerce Data) importers for year 2010 are listed here: The top 15 books and book print services USA, Canada and Germany lead the pack. The top 15 constitute more than 60% of the total imports for the eyar 2010.    India imported books and services worth US$456 Million in year 2009. As usual, we are yet to report the figures for 2010. Interestingly, India's imports are much higher than its exports for the same year.  If we work towards substituting these imports, will it create additional demands for the book print services. We will need to analyse this on the basis details of these imports.

UK is the largest Importer of Indian book print services in 2009. The total Indian book print exports in 2009, stood at 220 Million USD.

Thomas Abraham, the Managing Director of Hachette India presented an in-depth analysis on the state of the trade publishing in India and the future opportunities and concerns.He also went on to compare the strengths of print companies from China and India. He asked the Indian printers to examine if there is any point in trying to catch up with India. May be its time to build up core competencies and use them to the hilt. This presentation set the tone for discussions between the publishers and printers present at the 1st National Book Printers Conference to jointly work at increasing Indian book exports. The content of his presentation can be downloaded here : Click here to download

Mahendra Jain, Upkar Prakashan Upkar Prakashan, the Agra based competitive-test specialist, began its journey about 4 decades ago. They created a niche market for General knowledge books and test papers focused on competitive tests - in Hindi. For the youth from the Hindi heartlands, this opened the doors to the thousands of jobs offered by the state and central government establishments. In order to make this happen, Upkar focused on quality of content and production. They also ensured that the books were kept affordable. In order to achieve the cost effectiveness and production quality, they invested in their own book printing infrastructure. They went one step ahead and broke the convention by investing in brand new equipment. According to Mahendra Jain, the CMD of Upkar group " In the long run, the new machines deliver better quality and productivity - and that is the only way to produce cost effectively". From a few titles when they started,  Upkar has grown to a National leader in its segment - with more than 1600 titles in both English and Hindi. From publishing the career guides, General knowledge books and the other tools that help one in competitive exams, Upkar ventured into magazines addressing the same market. Today " Pratiyogota Darpan"  is the No.1 monthly in Hindi as per the Indian Readership Survey. Upkar has in-house editorial board of over 70 professionals and over 50 regular contributors from across India. The sales and distribution is supported by a network with over 5000 business associates. Welbound has been associated with Upkar group for about a decade now. A WB 2000 was installed at their plant in Agra to meet the demand in book production. This was soon followed up with one more. When Upkar decided to expand their capacities many folds - they again chose Welbound as their trusted post press partners. Pickwel was chosen over used machines to add on to the brand-new Komori four colour press, at the new plant. What attracted them Pickwel was the scope of upgradability and “Picksense” automation feature. As a publisher they realise that an incorrectly gathered book can dent their book (and reputation) permanently. Upkar also has Diploma folder, WB 3600 twelve clamp perfect binder and Trident E 20 three-knife trimmer at their new plant.

Key note speech by Prof Werner Rebsamen :  Click here to download Peter Geyger of Robatech AG on PUR systems : Click here to download Anil Krishna of Henkel on Cost efficient book production : Click here to download  Digital book printing by Ajay Bhatia of Kodak :  Click here to download Sven Schubert of Baumann on paper handling systems : Click here to download White paper presented at NBPC1 

 Christian Baumann with K C Sanjeev Welbound Worldwide, India's leading supplier of post press solutions have inked an agreement with Baumann Maschinenbau Solms to offer the Wohlenberg guillotines in SAARC nations. BMS is part of the Baumann group – one of the largest business firms for the graphic industry systems and consumables in Germany. Wohlenberg is a very popular brand of cutting systems known for their high reliability and life expectancy. Volkmar Assman, the Managing Director of Baumann is pleased that they could get a capable partner to promote the Wohlenberg- Baumann cutting systems in India. "The modern day Cutting systems are much beyond the ubiquitous guillotines. They need to be employed efficiently in order to derive the maximum return on investment. This means training the operator(s) on features of the machine, workflow and best practices. We feel that Welbound is best equipped to do this job - knowing their track record on training and after sales support". K C Sanjeev, the Chairman and Managing Director of Welbound Worldwide feel that this partnership will be an important milestone in the Indian graphic art industry. "Here is an opportunity to introduce highly sophisticated cutting systems that increase efficiency far beyond the current levels. The task at hand is not small and will involve bringing in best practices, across all the links of logistics and workflow. The savings - in terms of less energy, low wastage and manpower can be tremendous." Wohlenberg new generation guillotines are available in popular sizes of 76, 92, 115 and 132 cm. There are also special formats of 168 and 225 cm. These machines have been 'smartly engineered' to deliver high levels of efficiency and accuracy. "Full touch operations, large TFT display, facility to store more than 10000 programs, CIP4 compatibility and so on- the list of high end features is quite long. These features have made Wohlenberg a favorite with print companies that employ guillotines for high end applications" says Dinesh Ingawale of Welbound. Ingawale will lead a team of Welbound engineers who will go beyond merely installing these cutting systems. "We will try to provide a training program that will vastly improve the efficiency of paper handling and cutting". The Wohlenberg cutting system consisting of a paper loader, jogger, 132 cm size guillotine and un-loader will be demonstrated during Welbound's open house from 17 November 2011 at Trivandrum. This is being organized at the side lines of the 1st National Book Printer's Conference. Sven Schubert of Wohlenberg, who is an authority on paper handling and cutting, will make a presentation on "how to increase efficiency; reduce costs and have happy employees"

Just like its economy — “emerging” at a growth rate of 8.8% — India’s publishing industry is expanding at a rapid pace. Ranked as the sixth-largest publishing industry in the world, India has its entire gamut of publishing activities and services available in-house. An annual output of 90,000 books, with 19,000 publishers publishing them, has put the book market in India in the spotlight over the last few years.   The combined advantage of being the third-largest publisher of books in English and having competitive rates for publishing and printing technologies has made India a formidable player in the international publishing scene. The industry has been boosted by an infusion of capital since the year 2000, when the government of India allowed 100% equity in the publishing industry. The result has been several new opportunities and challenges for the Indian publishing industry.   Vinutha Mallya, Senior Editor of Mapin Publishing With literacy rates improving each year (currently the rate is 65% out of a population of 1.1 billion people) and with the expansion of the middle class, Indians are reading more than ever, with a particular focus on skill development and self improvement. Little wonder, then, that management books, cookbooks, self-help, and self-improvement books sold very well in 2009–2010. A recent nationwide survey revealed that one-fourth of the youth population, a staggering figure of 83 million, identify themselves as book readers. Of these, 58% are either at or below university matriculation level, spelling a demand for school and academic books. “Book publishing in Indian languages is growing,” writes Mallya Although publishers in India are grappling with the nuances of digital publishing, the buzz on e-publishing is getting louder. Print-on-demand, self-publishing, e-books, apps and enhanced e-books are all underway. Electronic ink devices and tablets for e-books are already available in the market, although indigenous models such as the Wink and Infibeam Pi have an advantage over the others due to their built-in Indian language support. In parallel, online selling is on a sharp upward curve, backed by India having the sixth-largest number of internet users in the world (61.34 million users in 2009) and the second-highest for number of mobile telephone users (670 million in 2010).   Sixty percent of global publishing outsourcing is based in India. The BPO (business process outsourcing) publishing services sector, say analysts at ValueNotes, will reach a value of $1.2 billion (€0.88 billion) in 2012. Indian BPOs offer a range of services, from data conversion, digitization and copy-editing to complete project management. Many major STM publishers, legal publishing firms, magazines, and newspapers, digitize, design, and archive content in India.   Along with online sales mechanisms, the emergence of organised retail in India — growing at 15% per annum — has opened new delivery channels for publishers and wholesalers. Currently, format retail stores account for 7% of book retail sales. Superstores, a.k.a., hypermarkets, are making steady progress into semi-urban and rural India, which will give further thrust to the trend. That books are selling alongside music, movies, lifestyle products, electronic items and the like is good news because it exposes books to non-traditional book buyers.   In the case of global exports of printed and published products, India’s share is 6.46% (compare with China’s 6.75%) according to data released by the non-profit CAPEXIL (Chemical and Allied Export Promotion Council of India). The value of book and publication exports was €267 million in 2009–2010. The Indian printing industry is said to be growing at 12% per annum, equipped with state-of-the-art printing technology. Improvements in infrastructure, support from the government, availability of paper, and delivery infrastructure like ports and roads, as well as increased communication, have all transformed this industry in recent years.   On the content end, book publishing in Indian languages is growing. Whereas, during the late 1990s English-language publishing made up half of the industry, today its share has been reduced to one-third. Translation into and from India’s 24 official languages (including English) is a growing area of interest for publishers like Penguin India, which has a Hindi imprint, Yatra Books.   The government has a major presence in the publishing field. An estimated 70% of textbook publishing in the country is done by the government, which has access to subsidized paper and low overhead costs, although the Federation of Indian Publishers has lobbied for the government to open up this sector of the industry to private publishers. Collaboration and consolidation among publishers is on the rise, as small publishers organize themselves into collectives such as the Independent Publishers’ Distribution Alternative of India; or join hands with larger publishers to market their books, as Zubaan has done with Penguin and Permanent Black with Orient Blackswan.   Issues of piracy and copyright are being addressed through legislation, even as there is now a growing academic interest in the publishing industry in India. At the same time, literature festivals are growing rapidly, with the Jaipur Literature Festival, held each year in January, leading the way. Undoubtedly, India’s book market is expanding and buoyant, and it invites the international community to take part in its growth story.   Vinutha Mallya is Senior Editor, Mapin Publishing, based in Ahmedabad, India. This article had first appeared in Publishing Perspectives earlier this year      

L-R, Bhuvnesh Seth, Vasant Goel, Pramod Khera, Amila Singhvi and Ramu Ramunathan of the core group at the Delhi Meeting The NBPC core committee's second round of meeting in Delhi on 16 January 2012 focussed on the nitty-gritty of how to "move forward" with the Book Print City initiative.  The meeting saw book print firms like Brijbasi Art Press, Gopsons Papers, IPP, Replika Press, Repro India and Thomson Press agree to scale up Indian book production.  Presently, India book exports stands at $225million as opposed to the world book export market of $ 40 billion. The meeting began with Indranil Mukherjee of Thomson Press indicating a need for collective bargaining for paper, plates, inks and other consumables. He stated: "this takes up a majority of the cost. If we as a group of book printers approach the vendors and suppliers together, we can sweat the equity of our collective strength. This will help us to bring down our pricing." According to Mukherjee and later Apoorv Garg of Brijbasi, pricing will be a key area of concern if India needs to compete against the Chinese book print counterparts. Pramod Khera of Repro India set the meeting in motion when he presented a task-list of things on how to proceed with the Book City project. "It is important to set immediate goals, in order to fulfill the vision of reaching one billion dollars in the export book print market by 2017." Khera added: "The strength of the Book City project will be to scale up; and bolster the capacity to fulfill the book printing needs of the world market." The committee agreed upon putting up a united pavilion at the Frankfurt Book Fair to be held from 10-14 October 2012. Also, the core members will make a high-pitched presentation during London Book Fair from 16-18 April 2012 in which they will highlight the new avatar of the Indian book print industry. In addition, the group will appoint a professional research agency that can ready and then present it to the three state governments which have expressed an interest in the project. A project management consultant firm will be appointed soon. P Sajith of NBPC stated: "A united front and a collective representation will bring India on the map as a desired destination for book printing needs." The benefits, according to him, will act as a catalyst for the domestic book print market as well as to other book printers which possess the potential of fulfilling the export bookmarket needs. A pre-operative corpus fund is being set up which will be shared by members of the NBPC core committee. Those from the core group who could not attend included Lovely Offset, Manipal Press and Multivista Global. Prominent book printers who are willing to be a part of this will be approached. The next meeting has been scheduled at the time of BMPA's Print Summit 2012 two-day conference in Mumbai on 23 and 24 February.

Anil Krishna of Henkel talking to the Pearson team at New Delhi  The Longman room at the Pearson Education's swanky office in Noida looked like a class room. Twelve production managers and executives of the leading book publisher and  8 of their print partners sat attentively, when the Henkel Adhesives - Welbound team discussed PUR technology. Anil Krishna, the Director of Henkel Adhesives India took the role of  a teacher - discussing the basics of the technology, application, advantages and precautions.  PUR hot melt application has matured, world over, with faster curing adhesives and simpler application systems. Welbound worldwide has partnered the world leaders in PUR adhesives - Henkel, to roll out PUR in India. Krishna discussed the various advantages of PUR including superior strength, highest longevity, resistance to severe heat as well as cold, resistance to solvents, lay flat binding and so on. In educational publishing the biggest advantages are stronger and durable books, flexibility that enhances readability and quicker turnaround in comparison to thread sewing. The printers who attended the discussions, agreed that thread sewing is the biggest bottleneck in book production. Even the fastest of sewing machines take four hours to produce 2000 books of 20 signatures - that will be cover drawn on a six clamp perfect binder in one hour. PUR will de-bottleneck the workflow, thereby increasing productivity drastically.  Krishna went on to address a number of myths related to PUR - be it about safety, handling and costs. The current generation PUR bound books can be in-line trimmed. The variable cost of thread sewing plus cover drawing, using a EVA hot melt adhesive will match the cost of  perfect binding using PUR. A calculator that will compare the costs have been developed by welbound and for a copy of the same please mail to welbound@gmail.com . The three hour session saw the production team of  Pearson clarifying various aspects related to environmental friendliness, page pull and flex values and the inroads made by PUR in India. P Sajith of Welbound explained that there are about 8 installations of PUR systems in India. These include HT Burda Ltd Noida, Repro India Ltd Surat, Lovely Offset Sivakasi, Pragati Offset Hyderabad, Sahaya Print Mumbai and Replika Press Kundli. Welbound works in tandem with Henkel and Robatech AG, a world leader in gluing systems, to convert existing binding lines.  The printers were shown a wide range of book samples, thin or thick, using different mix of paper - coated, recylced, high bulk , lay flat, stiff spine and so on. Anil Krishna explained the few machine settings that are needed to achieve these results. He also emphasised the fact that the print companies will need a systematic work flow and a disciplined team of operators in order to be succesful in PUR technology. This is also becoming very popular for hard cover books. For products like diaries, one can perfectbind the book block with PUR and round the spine within a stipulated interval.  The coming days will see a lot of interest in PUR binding as publishers like Pearson and Penguin are excited about this technology. As Sajith says : "PUR brings huge benefits for the industry. However, there is a learning curve - similar to the one we had when perfect binding was first introduced in India. We will need to spend a lot of time educating our customers and their operators. We already have a team of  six application specialists from Henkel, Robatech and Welbound who are trained to train our customers" . Anil Krishna had the last word when he said: " Adhesive binding is finally Perfect "

India's leading book print exporters met in Mumbai, on 19th December to form a core group that will head the NBPC movement. NBPC is constituted as a special interest group that will support and seek support from events and organizations that will work towards significant growth in book print exports from India. The core group includes eight super book printers - Pramod Khera (Repro), Ms Amila Singhvi (IPP), Vasant Goel (Gopsons), Bhuvnesh Sheth (Replika), R Jayaraman (Multivista) (his son, Rajesh attended on his behalf), Selva Kumar (Lovely) , Gautham Pai (Manipal) (Sashiranjan attended on his behalf), C J Jassawala (Thomson) (Kapil Raina attended on his behalf) in addition to Ramu Ramanathan and P Sajith. In this first meet the discussions were on general agenda for NBPC; there was also special focus on the 'Book City' project. The general consensus was that if Indian printers develop economies of scale there is nothing that can stand between us and success of the mission. In the coming weeks, there will be more deliberations on the Book City project. Some of the India Vs China myths were broken when the members shot down perceptions like India being costly, availability of FSC paper and so on. The members also took the decision of collectively promoting India at forthcoming book fairs. The core committee also regretted the fact that imports of  printed books to India is more than the exports, thanks to our flawed trade laws. The benefits of deemed exports enjoyed by many manufacturing and service sectors are not extended to printing services.  Ramu Ramanathan presented a paper titled the gaponomics of bookonomics : slipping behind shanghai. This paper looked what the Indian book print industry can do in order to reduce the gap. He listed ten trajectories that discussed information flow, establishing contacts, role of the state, economies of scale, M&A, the legal limbo, accelerators for growth, specific and selective aims, focus on education and helping other entrepreneurs. The paper also cited recent trends in publishing. P Sajith made a presentation : "NBPC - the road ahead". This covered the perceptions of the publishing world about Indian printing. There were also discussions on the world market for book printing and the key markets where India can be successful. Send us a mail : nbpcindia@gmail.com for a copy of the paper and the presentation. The core committee decided to meet again in New Delhi, during January 2012 to make firm up some of the decisions taken at Mumbai.This meeting also will finalise the programs for the year 2012.

Dr Michael Euler, Christian Baumann of Wohlenberg Book Binding Systems & P Sajith, K C Sanjeev of Welbound Worldwide Wohlenberg Book Binding Systems, one of the world leaders in Perfect Binding systems has entered into a long term association with Welbound. Wohlenberg is a fully owned subsidiary of Baumann group - a leading business firm for the graphic art industry, systems and consumables in Germany. They manufacture the famous brand of perfect binders in Verden (Aller) Germany.  Speaking to the media, Dr Michael Euler, the Managing Director of Wohlenberg says: “We held multi level discussions with Welbound during the past few months. We appreciate them for their in- depth understanding of the market; they have also been highly successful in building cost effective bookbinding machines plus supporting the customers with top class after-sales. Wohlenberg brings in state- of- the- art perfect binders that have a number of patented and unique features that provide an edge to the users. This partnership will make sure that this highly beneficial technology is made accessible to the Indian users. The association with Welbound will go beyond the general sales agreements. We are looking at technology partnerships to manufacture machines and accessories in India. The first such project will be Lucro 5000 - an inline perfect binding system.”  Christian Baumann, the President of Baumann group, who was in India to be a part of the 1st NBPC, mirrored these views. Dr Euler also mentioned that China and India were both on their radars while considering an alternate destination for manufacturing. China has better infrastructure; however it is easier to deal with an Indian company due to the advantage as the language of business is English.  “We shall not only look at this as an opportunity to manufacture and distribute machines, but also to train the Indian customers on the best practices. We will soon start conducting training sessions for operators and maintenance engineers at the Welbound facility in Thiruvananthapuram. K C Sanjeev, the managing director of Welbound says: “Here is an opportunity to introduce highly sophisticated bookbinding systems that increase efficiency far beyond the current levels. The task at hand is not small and will involve bringing in best practices, across all the links of logistics and workflow. The savings - in terms of less energy, low wastage and manpower can be tremendous. This partnership with Wohlenberg can go a long way in providing efficient and cost effective solutions for the Indian book print industry”.  Earlier, Baumann Cutting Systems, another subsidiary of the Baumann group, had appointed Welbound as their distributers for SAARC countries. Volkmar Assman, the Managing Director of Baumann is pleased that they could get a capable partner to promote the Wohlenberg cutting systems in India. “The modern day cutting systems are much beyond the ubiquitous guillotines. They need to be employed efficiently in order to derive the maximum return on investment. This means training the operators on features of the machine, workflow and best practices. We feel that Welbound is best equipped to do this job - knowing their track record on training and after sales support”

Top Indian book printing firms come together to form a special interest group The third meeting of the core group of National Book Printer's Conference was held at Four Seasons' Hotel in Mumbai on 24 February - The Printer's Day. This meeting had the maximum participation from top book print firms, indicating that "the book movement" is gathering interest with each meeting. The meeting approved the budget for holding an "Indian Noon" at London Book Fair during April 2012. This will include an interaction of Indian book printers with overseas buyers. The NBPC Core group will attempt to draw the publisher's interest to the changing avataar of the Indian book print industry. There will be presentations, panel discussions and a Q&A session. "The Indian Noon" will be by invitation and print firms who have already booked a stand at LBF and who are not a part of NBPC core group could participate. For details, please mail to nbpcindia@gmail.com The core group also discussed the status of a common Indian Pavilion with the Frankfurt book fair authorities. As reported earlier, NBPC is trying to host an Indian Pavilion at the 2012 version of the world's largest book fair. It is anticipated that if this proposal goes through, there will be many new participants (printers and publishers) from India, during this year.  These discussions were followed by detailed presentations by leading management consultancy firms about the Book City. It is anticipated that the lead consultant will be short-listed and selected in a short while from now

Taipei International Book Exhibition (TIBE), Taipei, Taiwan 1 - 6 February 2012 www.tibe.org.tw   Vilnius International Book Fair / Baltic Book Fair, Vilnius, Lithuania 23 - 26 February 2012   New Delhi World Book Fair, New Delhi, India 25 February - 4 March 2012   Jerusalem International Book Fair, Jerusalem, Israel February 2012   Dublin Book Festival, Dublin, Ireland March 2012   Abu Dhabi International Book Fair, Abu Dhabi, UAE 20 - 25 March 2012   Paris Book Fair, Paris, France 16 - 19 March 2012   Bangkok International Book Fair, Bangkok, Thailand 29 March - 8 April 2012   Bologna Children's Book Fair, Bologna, Italy 27 - 30 March 2012   London Book Fair, London, UK 16 - 18 April 2012   Budapest International Book Festival, Budapest, Hungary 19 - 22 April 2012   Buenos Aires Book Fair, Buenos Aires, Argentina 17 April - 7 May 2012   Thessaloniki Book Fair, Thessaloniki, Greece April 2012   Geneva Book Fair, Geneva, Switzerland 25 - 29 April 2012   Bogota International Book Fair, Bogota, Colombia 18 April - 1 May 2012   Prague International Book Fair, Prague, Czech Republic 17 - 20 May 2012   Warsaw International Book Fair, Warsaw, Poland 10 - 13 May 2012   BookExpo America, New York City, USA 5 - 7 June 2012   Seoul International Book Fair, Seoul, Korea 20 - 24 June 2012   Tokyo International Book Fair, Tokyo, Japan 5 -8 July 2012   Colombo International Book Fair, Colombo, Sri Lanka September 2012   Nairobi International Book Fair, Nairobi, Kenya October 2012   Goteborg Book Fair, Goteborg, Sweden September 2012   Frankfurt Book Fair, Frankfurt, Germany 10 - 14 October 2012  

NBPC core comittee India's leading book print exporters met in Mumbai, on 19th December to form a core group that will head the NBPC movement. NBPC is constituted as a special interest group that will support and seek support from events and organizations that will work towards significant growth in book print exports from India. The core group includes eight super book printers - Pramod Khera (Repro), Ms Amila Singhvi (IPP), Vasant Goel (Gopsons), Bhuvnesh Sheth (Replika), R Jayaraman (Multivista) (his son, Rajesh attended on his behalf), Selva Kumar (Lovely) , Gautham Pai (Manipal) (Sashiranjan attended on his behalf), C J Jassawala (Thomson) (Kapil Raina attended on his behalf) in addition to Ramu Ramanathan and P Sajith. In this first meet the discussions were on general agenda for NBPC; there was also special focus on the 'Book City' project. The general consensus was that if Indian printers develop economies of scale there is nothing that can stand between us and success of the mission. In the coming weeks, there will be more deliberations on the Book City project. Some of the India Vs China myths were broken when the members shot down perceptions like India being costly, availability of FSC paper and so on. The members also took the decision of collectively promoting India at forthcoming book fairs. The core committee also regretted the fact that imports of  printed books to India is more than the exports, thanks to our flawed trade laws. The benefits of deemed exports enjoyed by many manufacturing and service sectors are not extended to printing services.  Ramu Ramanathan presented a paper titled the gaponomics of bookonomics : slipping behind shanghai. This paper looked what the Indian book print industry can do in order to reduce the gap. He listed ten trajectories that discussed information flow, establishing contacts, role of the state, economies of scale, M&A, the legal limbo, accelerators for growth, specific and selective aims, focus on education and helping other entrepreneurs. The paper also cited recent trends in publishing. P Sajith made a presentation : "NBPC - the road ahead". This covered the perceptions of the publishing world about Indian printing. There were also discussions on the world market for book printing and the key markets where India can be successful. Send us a mail : nbpcindia@gmail.com for a copy of the paper and the presentation. The core committee decided to meet again in New Delhi, during January 2012 to make firm up some of the decisions taken at Mumbai.This meeting also will finalise the programs for the year 2012.

The story of Indian book imports from China The imports of books and book print services to India grew by a massive 20% in year 2010, over the previous year. This is as per the latest figures reported by United Nations Commerce & Trade, the world body responsible for reporting commodity trade. India took its time in sending its 2010 figures. Till the end of 2011, we were relying on the 2009 figures of USD 455 Million.   In 2010 India imported books worth USD 545 Million. Most of these books are in the trade and higher education segments plus multi colour. Even though many of the publishers of these books are based in India, the printing gets outsourced from countries like China. The Chinese share in Indian market (imports) has grown from about 7% in 2009 to 25%, as per the latest reports.     The Indian imports from China stands at 138 Million USD in 2010. This is inching closer to India's total exports, much faster than we like. The Indian tiger, who exported just under 0.4 Million USD worth of books to China, looks a paper tiger, in comparison.   In 2009 United Kingdom was the largest exporter of books to India. Now they are relegated to the No.2 spot. Indian printers attribute the major reason for this preference, as the availability of cheaper coated paper in China. In some of the International markets, we are in a position to compete with China on prices; but not in India.  Book printing does not get the benefit of some other trades in India, when it comes to 'deemed' exports status.   To give an example, a buyer based in UK could place an order on an Indian manufacturer, make payments in Pound Sterling and ask for delivering the goods to its subsidiary in India. This is treated as a deemed export and the manufacturer gets most of the benefits available to exports - including duty free import of raw materials. This is not so when it comes to book printing. This gives a serious disadvantage to the Indian printer.   The 2010 imports data indicates that there is robust growth in the domestic book industry. It is another matter that China is capitalizing on this increase in demand.   Click here to see the leading book exporters to India

M Suresh and Sandeep Pai with Vijay Kumar of Lovely Offset The combined team of Henkel Adhesives India and Welbound Worldwide offered insightful training on the PUR know-how to the operators of Lovely Offset in Sivakasi. The technical instructors comprising of a duo of Sandeep Pai (Henkel) and Suresh M Nair (Welbound) conducted an interactive training session for the operators of PUR system at Lovely Offset in Sivakasi. The session started off with a discussion arising from the queries of the operators who shared their experiences, concerns and doubts on handling PUR. These were comprehensively clarified by the instructors, before they went on to thrash out the basic Do’s and Don’ts.  It included precautionary measures like a demonstration on the best possible way of cleaning the PUR pre-melt tank.  A major chunk of the discussion was spent on discussing ideal operational parameters as the in-process inspection is considered to be tricky when it comes to handling PUR. Lovely Offset, the leading book printer from Sivakasi is one of the major book printer exporters from India. It is one of the earliest printers in India to adopt PUR.

Suresh Nair with Harsha Paruchuri of Pragati Offset India's best known Commercial printer - Pragati Offset, Hyderabad has upgraded their bookbinding capability. They have made the initial step towards making thread-sewing redundant. From now on, most of the books made at Pragati - both hard cover and soft cover, will be bound using Polyurethene Reactive Hotmelts. PUR has been chosen over standard hot melt adhesives for many reasons—with superior adhesion and layflat being the most important ones. There are other benefits too: high heat and cold resistance, less wrinkle on backbone, solvent resistance to name a few. In comparison to thread sewing a job first and then pasting a cover - PUR takes much less turn around time, at lower costs. The major concerns in implementation of PUR were addressed - when Henkel International, worlds largest manufacturer of adhesives joined hands with Robatech AG of Switzerland and Welbound Worldwide, India. The trio offered solutions for PUR across a wide ranging platform. The PUR system at Pragati is a Robatech MOD4 installed on a Kolbus binding line. The adhesive is from Henkel and the integration of the system has been done by engineers from Welbound. According to M Suresh Nair of Welbound and the team leader for this project: Integrating a PUR system on an existing machine has its own challenges. What has helped us is our experience on spine preparation and gluing that are critical to perfect binding. The expertise of Robatech and Henkel came in as a great support. However the most critical factor behind this success is the customer's passion on delivering a unique experience to their client; and the patience they exhibited all through the installation process. Jijesh Bhaskaran from Robatech India and Sandeep Pai from Henkel CAC Pvt Ltd were involved in the commissioning of the equipment and training the team at Pragati. P. Narendra of Pragati says : "The whole process of installation went off smoothly and I am thrilled that PUR is a reality in Pragati"

The book print industry in India is encountering new challenges; and unlike rest of the world, it has nothing to do with (declining) demand for books. test As per available data, based on consumption of paper and adhesives by the Indian book printers, the volume growth in FY 2012-13, over the previous year is short of 20%. This is driven by burgeoning demand for textbooks and guides among India's young population. The book print industry in India is encountering new challenges; and unlike rest of the world, it has nothing to do with (declining) demand for books. As per available data, based on consumption of paper and adhesives by the Indian book printers, the volume growth in FY 2012-13, over the previous year is short of 20%. This is driven by burgeoning demand for textbooks and guides among India's young population. Glimpses from the previous open house The first such meet was hosted on 1 February 2013 and the theme revolved around business and technology. During the Open House book print CEOs saw (and discussed) the latest trends in bookbinding at Welbound's Thiruvananthapuram plant. For a complete picture gallery click here Having said that the publishers have to confront new issues like change in syllabus, modification in academic schedules, logistics and of course: cost efficiency. They are not willing to wait till eternity for the printer to deliver one million books; instead they provide work to those who deliver before time. They want printers to extend services beyond printing and take up distribution. Delivering very small numbers, quick replenishment of stocks - just in time, zero rejections, environmental friendly operations and streamlining with the publishers' workflow and so on: these are the demands from the publishing industry. A dialogue between the print buyers, printers and solution providers create a module for operational efficiency in finding the right solutions. Welbound Worldwide is pleased to announce its next open house, in Thiruvananthapuram on 20 July to discuss the "Dynamics of Book Printing 2013". A dialogue between the print buyers, printers and solution providers create a module for operational efficiency in finding the right solutions. Welbound Worldwide is pleased to announce its next open house, in Thiruvananthapuram on 20 July to discuss the "Dynamics of Book Printing 2013". Delivering very small numbers, quick replenishment of stocks - just in time, zero rejections, environmental friendly operations and streamlining with the publishers' workflow and so on: these are the demands from the publishing industry. For this, we are inviting leading book publishers, printers, binders and short-run print solution providers to join the discussions. There will be special sessions, led by specialists, on managing the print dynamics: be it managing the workflow or resources. We take this opportunity to invite you to be a part of this must-attend open house. Venue Welbound Worldwide Factory Plot No: 39, Monvila Industrial Development Plot, Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum), Kerala Date 20th July 2013, 11am to 6pm Program Walk-through the factory, demonstration of PUR systems, paper handling equipment, inline binders, visit to a near by printing unit, one to one discussions with the specialists.  Discussions on workflow, training, efficient technology plus adapting to the new situations. We take this opportunity to invite you to Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum) to take part in this Book Open House. We request you to let us know your travel plan.