manroland has sold two single-width Uniset presses to China’s influential Economic Daily Group following a competitive tender.

The 800,000-copy flagship daily is a bridge bridge between government and Chinese enterprises, and is published by the Central Propaganda Commitee of the Communist Party of China. It has 60 offices in China and more than 20 more overseas.

The group includes nine newspapers and five Magazines, as well as two publishing houses, a central internet Portal and its own business school.

The printing factory, established in 1983 is a quality leader with the Chinese Newspaper Association and winner of numerous prizes for quality and technical management. A staff of 220 employees handle the printing of 30 newspapers and periodicals also including China Population News, China Business News, Entertainment News and Beijing Morning Post.

The two all-colour Uniset presses will replace “several old presses” and are expected to go into production in September 2015. A new 15-storey building will have all the printing equipment in its three underground floors.

Announcing the order, manroland web sales vice president Frank Tietsche and manroland Greater China web deputy general manager Wu Xinxin emphasised the manufacturer’s “strong commitment” to the strategically very important project: “We are very happy that Economic Daily has the confidence into manroland web systems technology and finally made the decision for our equipment based on the best price-performance-ratio.”

In turn, deputy general secretary and director of Economic Daily’s printing factory Xie Lianlian emphasises his full confidence in future strategic cooperation.

Says Economic Daily deputy secretary general, Xie Lianlian: “We are convinced that manroland web systems will offer us high quality and best-in-class service.

“The new machine will lift us to a higher printing quality level and ensures us more competiveness in the market.”

Pictured (front row from left) are Pan Oujia (general manager of Gammerler China), Wu Xinxin, Xie Lianlian and Sun Anjun (general manager Printing Device Department of China OPTO-Electro Industries Co).