Printing news of the Tula Region

18.03.2014

Historians made the following description of the county town way of life “… Efremov town merchants carried out significant deals with bread, therefore the town was considered to be the richest one in the province”. And the existing printing house “Pechatnik” started its operation more than 130 years ago. It may be rightfully considered as the historical and cultural heritage of the region. Not so long ago in 24 regional centers of the Tula Region there were printing houses producing local newspapers and various printed blanks. “Today “Pechatnik” is the only remaining really operating regional printing house in the region, and may be in Russia, - says the Director of the enterprise, Mrs. Lyubov Shcherbinina. – Our customers are 27 municipal districts of the region, including publishing house “Pressa 71” which involves 24 local newspaper editorials since 2012, and 23 of them are placing their orders in our printing house, and we also print 5 commercial newspapers. All local newspapers are mostly printed on weekly bases. One overall circulation is 72 thousand copies, volume from 4 to 16 pages in four or two color printing. Our team is not big, but effectively working and with friendly relationship, the stuff has many years experience. We train and educate our younger employees, now three of them study in the Moscow State University of Printing Arts. Speaking about the prospective of printing in the local printing house, I always say – we will always have enough work, because television and internet can provide general information, and local newspapers are about people who buy it. People learn important news about life of their region or village, and heads of municipalities are getting informed about the major problems concerning the residents of the territories under their jurisdiction. Therefore, this source of “live” news will excite the interest of local residents for a long time.”
During its long history, the printing house “Pechatnik” has changed and carried out the entire technological cycle of printing growth – from lithography to offset printing. There’s only one thing remained constant – profitability. Therefore, the new printing press was purchased at the own funds. But it was possible to get the approval to use the money only with help of the Governor of the Tula Region, Mr. Vladimir Gruzdev. Modernization project is not easy as the printing room is not designed for printing towers due to the ceiling height of three and a half meters. Therefore, specialists of the printing house and the company “Vneshmultigraph” discussed technical requirements for new web offset printing press M 360 with in-line installation of printing units. Configuration was designed of two unwinds, two printing units 2+2 and folder 1:2:2 with possibility of printing 8 pages newspaper 4+4 or 16 pages newspaper 2+2 for one run. After long and careful consideration of the machine layout, VMG and Manugraph engineers approved the new project. In fact, there are no analogues to this kind of M 360 layout in Russia.
In the end of February, 2014 the acceptance act was signed, and newspaper complex stared its operation. But before this event there was a business meeting of the heads of the printing house, “Publishing house “Pressa 71”, print media and broadcasting committee of the Tula Region with editors of local newspapers. The editors got familiar with prepress process, CtP operation and printing quality of the new M 360. The first production print of the local newspaper “Nasledie” was highly appreciated. “We don’t have any pessimism regarding the future of print media, - says the Director of “Publishing house “Pressa 71”, Mrs. Natalia Kostomarova. – After establishing of the publishing house in 2012 during two years total circulation of local newspapers increased from 60 to 74 thousands of copies. 80% of the circulation is sent to subscribers via Russian Post. For one ruble of governmental subsidy the publishing house earns two rubles. There’s an example describing the interest of readers to their newspapers: population of the Kamensky region is 9 thousand people, 1700 of them are subscribers. It is sad that retail in the Tula Region is not yet sufficiently developed, as the average price of periodical in kiosk is not high – 7 rubles. Due to this reason our planes are surly connected with subscription. People read e-books only in Moscow metro, so the newspaper remains the most accessible information product for residents of Russian province”.
With new technology in prepress and printing process the specialists of the printing house “Pechatnik” strongly hope that the first stage of modernization will significantly increase competitiveness of the printing house and certainly attract new customers.