Ideas and innovation continue to be the driving force for press manufacturers vying for business in an increasingly competitive market. And at the top high-volume end, the stakes are greater than ever.

Yet in each geographic (and demographic) market, requirements differ. There's no 'one size fits all' even for publishers of high-circulation newspapers.

A decade ago, the need to produce a lot of large and colourful newspaper products at the last moment - notably editions of UK tabloid The Sun - largely spawned the development of triple-wide manroland Colorman presses. Parent News International bought 12 of the five-tower XXL presses for its showpiece Broxbourne site - capable of printing a million newspapers an hour - and another seven for Merseyside and Scottish plants.

With Sunday editions and contract work such as the Daily Telegraph, the presses now account for two-thirds of the 60 million newspapers still printed in Britain each week.

In India - where circulations are even greater and printed newspapers buck a global trend by continuing to gain readership - and to a lesser extent, other parts of Asia, the requirements are different. Huge print orders for relatively smaller products mean that the flexibility for example, of being able to increase pagination in two-page increments is extremely valuable.

And there are other considerations, notably coping with often unreliable power supplies, inconsistent paper quality and volatile exchange rates.

In between are markets such as Europe - and especially Germany - where acute regionalisation of daily titles has created a demand for presses able to switch from edition to edition with a minimum of time and materials lost. And the US, where there's little money for press upgrades but a renewed realisation that despite reduced sales and advertising, well-managed printed papers can still make a lot of money.

Similarities between the South Asian and Japanese newspaper markets have helped manufacturers such as Mitsubishi, TKS and Seiken gain orders in India.

Five new Mitsubishi DiamondSpirit SA lines - from a new compact design introduced at the 2013 World Publishing Expo in Berlin - formed that year's biggest press order, and are now being installed at Malayala Manorama sites in Kerala in southern India. Lighter and more than a metre lower than its predecessor, the double-width, one-around press has been designed to fit buildings built for single-width presses.

The DiamondSpirit SA is one of a new breed of press designed specifically to address the needs of the growing Indian and Asian markets, using less power and wasting less paper on start-ups.

Another feature is a 'soft stop' function - which uses residual energy to slow and stop the press without breaking webs when an unexpected power outage occurs - claimed to be more economical than UPS systems. This has become an important issue, with publishers including the Times of India moving away from inhouse generators as exchange rates push up the cost of diesel fuel.

Launched as a four-page weekly in 1888, Malayala Manorama now has a circulation of 2.3 million copies and is published from 18 printing centres, 11 of them in Kerala.

Also in that busy state, rival Mathrubhumi is adding a further TKS Color Top press to the three it has already installed. The company has been progressively installing the 5000UDI 4x1 presses since 2011, when it commissioned a new factory in Trivandrum. The latest order is for a six-tower line for Calicut, where Mathrubhumi has its head office.

Again the 92-year-old title has multiple editions to produce - ten of them in Kerala - as part of a circulation of more than 1.5 million.

TKS kit is also in use at HT Media in Greater Noidia, where an 80,000 cph Color Top 5100UDI replaced older - and only recently extended - manroland lines 18 months ago. The ten-tower 4x1 press has right-angle reelstands and a new TKS system which allows simultaneous production of two different products, such as a 28-page Hindustan Times and a two-section (18 and 12 pages) HT City.

Claimed to be the biggest English-language newspaper in the world, the Times of India has also been working to upgrade capacity and productivity at its 12 print sites and the 24 sites of its contractors.

Impressive statistics - recently quoted as 360,000 tonnes of mostly-imported newsprint, 7500 tonnes of ink and 4.4 million printing plates to print 77 billion pages a year - also bring huge challenges.

Publishing company Bennett, Coleman & Co has been buying manroland presses since a Geoman was commissioned in 1997, and took colour to Delhi in 2004 with the maker's 4x2 Colorman and 4x1 Regioman presses. Recently, recognising product and price pressures, manroland has followed up at Times of India with a 4x1 design evolved from the single-width Cromoman. A first example, installed in Pune in early 2012 has H-type units and floor-mounted reelstands at right-angles to the pressline, adding to web-width (and product) flexibility. Again, compact design - including a 5.4 metre height at Pune - addresses installation into existing buildings without air conditioning.

Fluctuating exchange rates dictate the benefits of buying locally however, and Indian maker Manugraph - whose CityLine and HiLine single-width presses are in use at the TOI contract sites - has been working to build a presence in the 4x1 space.

Ahead of the Mitsubishi order, one of the first 4x1 Manugraphs went into Malayala Manorama's Alappuzha site - where it is now reported to be printing 160,000 copies a night at up to 65,000 cph - and the publisher has since installed three similar presses.

Beyond these Smartline presses Manugraph has recently announced a marketing link with Japanese maker Seiken covering the 80,000 cph space, offering the Seiken 85 in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and the Gulf. Seiken already has installations in India including Tamil daily the Daily Thanthi (Seiken 65) and is prominent for its single gripper conveyor installations.

In other markets, the 4x1 advantages may be less important but can still be worthwhile where a succession of short-run products are concerned. Australia has two 4x1-equipped plants, one a Goss Uniman S at Border Mail Printing in Wodonga - now part of Fairfax Media - and the other at APN Print's Yandina, Queensland site. Here a double-width manroland Regioman is the productive coldset workhorse, teamed with a single-width, two-around heatset Uniset tower.

As in all new press installations, the bottom line is savings... in reduced paper waste - frequently also achieved with reductions in cut-off or page width - manning and product 'right-sizing'.

As I write this, a two-page house ad in a broadsheet daily - laudable though expensive - is a reminder of the costs which come when section sizes have to be matched on a two-around double-width press. Even mature markets are finding the substantial savings possible - and scope to consolidate the production of a number of titles or presses - well worth a review of plant options.

Last year News Corp Australia manufacturing manager Marcus Hooke disclosed that new presses were not out of the question for its Melbourne print site - where the group's biggest tabloid is still produced on presses originally installed two decades ago... when potentially more appropriate 4x1 and 6x2 press formats had scarcely been thought of, let alone built.

Naysayers continue to write off the surprising Australian print market, but if you're likely to be printing newspapers for another decade, optimising plant to minimise the cost of manning and materials can still deliver a return.