Digital printing: Some remarks from Denys Kissling

I just received "newspaper techniques" [February 2007, FOCUS report on digital printing for newspapers]… I agree that the main obstacle to digital printing is the pricing policy of the digital printing manufacturers. The so-called "click charge" pricing policy is putting costs to the level of offset printing very quickly. I had the opportunity to make some comparisons on real projects. At the level of around 2000 copies an offset web press is often cheaper. For low print runs a second web press is a valuable alternative.

Another obstacle is the size of the page. Digital printing quite often cannot print 2 broadsheet pages (necessary in order to be able to fold the printed product into a newspaper), therefore the size of the newspaper has to be reduced.

More and more the printing has to be 4 colours, because the ad customers do not want to see their ads just in black and white. And digital 4 colours printing is proportionately even more expensive than black and white.


Denys Kissling
ch. Auguste Vilbert 22
1218 Le Grand-Saconnex
Switzerland

[Denys Kissling is the author of Ifra's Special Report on printing cost calculation and an expert in digital printing.]


Page first published: 05.02.2007