All eyes are on the Transmag/SF Chronicle experiment, manroland sales vice president Peter Kuisle tells editor Peter Coleman. Newspaper markets in Australia and New Zealand are very different to the “dreadful” position of those in the USA ... but change is just as necessary. That’s the view of Peter Kuisle, sales executive vice president of German press manufacturer manroland. And he believes that only through consolidation of plants will newspapers here be able to achieve the production efficiencies they will need. It’s a critical time: As we talk during the PacPrint09 trade show in Melbourne, the first of the big presses is about to come on stream at contract printer Transmag in San Francisco’s bay area, while the future of the ‘Chronicle’ itself hangs in the balance. “Everyone is looking to see how it will turn out, and if it works well I am positive this will be the showcase for other publishers,” he says. The SF story is well publicised: Three triple-wide manroland Colorman XXL presses – equipped with hybrid inert UV dryers – are being commissioned at the a new Bay Area plant built by Canadian contract printer Transcontinental, which will replace old flexo equipment at sites the publisher is to close. But it’s a race against time: In February, the Hearst title was among the latest to announce that it will be sold or closed unless jobs can be cut to staunch losses in excess of last year’s US$50 million ($61 million), a fate already served on the group’s ‘Seattle Post-Intelligencer’ which ceased print publication in March after 146 years of publication. There’s a cruel irony that video of the closure announcement at the seattlepi.com website which succeeds its print parent. (See: www.seattlepi.com/business/403793_piclosure17.html) For Transcontinental – which has itself taken measures to deal with a profit downturn resulting from the recession – there’s been a reaffirming of its commitment to the SF project ... and a reminder that the 15-year contract it signed with Hearst in 2006 indemnifies it against closure or sale of the title. Peter Kuisle agrees with my assertion that publishers in Australia and New Zealand have been ‘tarred with the same brush’ as the very troubled US newspaper market, and suggests Europe and some other countries also face the problem. “We see success stories in the US, but really it’s dreadful how the newspaper business is being treated there,” he says. “The market there is very different. “There has been very little investment, not just in presses but in the product itself, such as in quality journalism. Also the business model is quite different, dependent on advertising and with circulation less important. Now you see what happens: It’s much more vulnerable.” The only route may be for some highly-geared large publishing companies to go into bankruptcy before the mould is broken, the restrictive agreements ended, I suggest, and he agrees: “That’s the sad part. “You don’t have to go back far to when US newspapers were making profits of 30 per cent but they took the money and didn’t invest, and this is what the result is.” But he sees cause for hope that “good newspapers will yet be successful” in the USA, and looks to a successful outcome from the ‘San Francisco Chronicle’ outsourcing. With outsourcing, it implements a model Kuisle sees as newspapers’ salvation. Ignore for a moment, the peculiar circumstances in Seattle, where a joint production agreement may still not have been enough when the New York Times-owned ‘Seattle Times’ joined its rival in morning publication. Nearer to home, he will not of course comment on my suggestion that metropolitan rivals News Limited and Fairfax Media might find it hard to share plant in Melbourne and Sydney, but he points to the success of outsourcing in regional Australia and says it might be a good model for New Zealand, where many sites are in need of upgrading. Ignore too, perhaps, that the most prominent print partnership between independent publishers, Border Mail Printing, ended when Fairfax Media acquired two of the three partners ... but different expedients might force it to work elsewhere. He questions why “every little newspaper” needs to have to have its own printing plant: “It’s not necessary,” he says. “They should join together and invest in new equipment. A lot of costs can be taken out of the process, so that money is available to be invested in quality – in content, but also in quality print and finishing. “There are new ideas, new formats materials – there is so much out there – and it may be as simple as following the example of newspapers around the world. We just have to do it.” In the “fairly small” New Zealand market with its “pretty old” installed base, Kuisle says he expects some consolidation of print plants as equipment is updated, rather than straight replacements, with some opportunities expected in the next couple of months. “Why not consolidate some of the plants to make others more modern,” he suggests. “That’s what I see, and the numbers will show it would make a lot of sense to combine resources.” Kuisle says manroland emphatically “still believes in the future of newspapers”, supporting World Association of Newspapers heavily as an exclusive partner. “We promote newspapers as much as we can,” he says, but accepts that many of those which are struggling will not return to earlier form. Their future as printed publications will depend on structural changes: “We see that in our customers and we see it in the industry,” he says. Although he is leaving the ‘Shaping the Future of the Newspaper’ project, he remains personally “very involved” and would have been at WAN’s ‘Power of Print’ conference in Barcelona, Spain, but for commitments in Australia. So what shape does Kuisle believe that future newspapers should take? While ‘Osterreich’-style daily newspapers combining coldset with heatset magazines are an option, he believes the combination is less important than the production flexibility to produce a variety of different options and formats for both newspaper and contract work. “Not just heatset/coldset, but the increasing number of technical possibilities which were previously seen only on commercial presses,” he says, “not just drying, but folding, finishing, and stitching. More of these components and possibilities are merging into newspaper commercial.” With labour costs high in Australia – as they are in Europe – automation is very much part of manroland’s technology focus. “The key for a new investment is that you have to make sure it is the most cost-efficient option, using automation systems and as few people as possible.” Kuisle points to the ‘autoprint’ press series, launched at DRUPA and with an installation running in Osnabruck, which includes completely automatic plate loading in a ‘one touch’ pushbutton application. “The technologies are there for fully automatic start-ups – from prepress to press, and also roll handling – and there may be other considerations such as union regulations ... but to start a press and run it, why would you need more than one,” he says. UV too, is much more developed that when it was shown during IfraExpo 2007 in Vienna. The Transmag installation will show what has been achieved with improved inks, and as an industrialised process used on a daily basis. On-press digital printing – in which manroland cooperates with Kodak – is another technology area Kuisle is happy to champion: “We have shown the technology, but the question is now the business model and who takes it up,” he says. “For microzoning, and to add elements and other advertising, it can be done very cheaply into the newspaper direct, without the positioning restrictions of processing in the mailroom. “But as with so many things, it’s the advertiser and the publisher who has to take it up and use it,” he says.