From pre-press to a full-fledged printing house…with everything from pre-press to post press under one roof, Rave Scan has come a long way. Stringent quality measures, top-of-the-line machinery and the desire to excel in the print production – has given Rave Scan a name to reckon with. Almost 60 percent of their turnover attributes to book printing – children books, annual books, coffee table books, etc.

For Rave India, book printing is their main strength – short-run commercial jobs come and go but book printing is something which is a 24x7 job, which they are accomplishing with elan and ease.

“The demand for coffee table books is rising as the awareness is more and self-publishing has given wings to the creativity of many first-time authors,” told Charu of Rave India. “Earlier, coffee table books were a luxury which not everybody would keep at their homes but now the scenario has changed, even ordinary households love to flaunt them.”

“The print run for such coffee table books varies anything between 1,000-2,000 copies. These are high-end jobs and we provide the complete solution for these books. Infact, few of our customers just provide us the pictures and we develop the content and design it accordingly,” told Bhavnesh Kumar, director, Rave India, as a matter of fact.

Rave Scan also specializes in producing annual school magazines for which they provide a complete solution, right from designing to post press. “We have a tie-up with a host of schools and we provide a complete solution to them,” he added.

“Almost 60 percent of our turnover comes from books, it is an year round job for us. Balance 40 percent of our turnover comes from other print jobs,” told Rakesh Bhatnagar, managing director, Rave India adding, “Our customers are mostly Indian publishers and we feel happy servicing the local clients, though we would definitely like to go for exports as well.”

Talking about the book printing market in India, Rakesh added, “It is still less as compared to foreign market, where we find people reading books everywhere – in buses, trains, beachside – in fact everywhere. That culture is still not there in India and hence there’s still a lot of scope to grow.”

The journey of Rave India has been interesting. Starting as a pre-press house in 1993, they ventured into printing in 2004. “In 2002-2003, we visited the top industry fairs like IPEX, drupa and Frankfurt Book Fair, we realized that pre-press houses have become passé abroad. And if we have to grow, we need to diversify into printing as most of the pre-press houses had by then become a part of the printing area – they were just an ancillary structure,” reminisced Rakesh.

With a workforce of over 400 individuals, Rave India is busy servicing a number of publishers, schools and corporate. “We have all facilities under one roof – pre-press, press and post press. Though we are proud to say that we have an impressive line of machines for our pre-press and press units, we still need to strengthen our post press section,” he added.

Combined together in their three units in Naraina, their press units house Heidelberg XL 105 4 colour machine, two Heidelberg SM 74 5-colour machine, one Heidelberg SM 102 4-colour machine and one Heidelberg single colour machine, besides KBA Planeta VCVD 5-colour CPC with coater, KBA Planeta P-44 with alcohol dampener and KBA Planeta P-24 2-colour machine.

While, their post press segments house one Perfecta program cutting machine, four Heidelberg Polar program cutting machine, five Stahl folding machines, one Muller Martini flowline saddle stitcher, two 6 clamp perfect binder, three saddle stitchers, two thermal and two wet lamination machines, two nipping machines, two shrink wrapping machines, one creasing and perforation machines, two bundling machines, one die-cutting machine, one Sakurai Maestro online coater with UV conveyer and three Muller Martini section sewing machines, etc.

Talking about their new unit in Gurgaon, Rakesh informed, ‘Right now, we have two printing machines in our Gurgaon office – Heidelberg CD 102 4-colour preset and Heidelberg CD 102 4+L preset and most probably, we might go for a complete packaging unit there.”

“We have been expanding for the last five years and so are not eyeing any major expansion this year. Last year, we experienced a growth of 35 percent than previous year and the first four months of the new financial year has given us a growth of 46 percent over the same period last year. We are targeting a growth of 50 percent this financial year,” echoed Rakesh and Bhavnesh. “Also, we might go for IPO after sometime and then plan for major expansion,” concluded Rakesh.

-committed to provide cover-to-cover excellence

Specialized in the art of book production, Multivista Global Limited is committedly imparting marvellous values to every job while producing on an average around 80,000 books a day for the prominent publishers from both India and overseas like UK, Netherlands, Germany, Ghana, etc. How their constantly followed corporate philosophy ‘Opening new vistas and setting new standards and Times change but values remain’ has helped them to grow from a modest letterpress printer to book manufacturer of international fame, finds out D Ramalingam from All About Book Publishing. What started as different business units since their inception in the year 1974 and amalgamated into a single conglomerate under the name ‘Multivista Global Limited’ in October 1992, Multivista is a closely held public limited company, sagaciously run under astute guidance of the four brothers under dedicated roles of - RS Mani, executive chairman of the group; R Shankar, managing director; R Jayaraman, director, print solutions and marketing; and R Ravi, director, operations. The integration of the next generation has also helped them to cement their place in the industry. Jayaraman’s son Rajesh Jayaraman (a finance graduate from US), vice president (marketing) and Ravi’s son Karthik Ravi (a printing technologist from Rochester Institute of Technology), vice president (operations) have entrenched themselves into business are excitingly ready to take on challenges of this industry. Deepak Subramanian, son of Mani and Mahesh Jayaraman, son of Jayaraman are the vice-presidents (marketing) of their distribution business. Their strong belief in investing in state-of-the-art machines has paid off in the long run, and over the last decade, Multivista started setting their foot in the global market, with the mantra of ‘delivering high quality products with utmost customer satisfaction'. With staff strength of over 500 individuals, the third generation company Multivista Global Limited is now a state-of-the-art printing facility, located in the hub of software companies in the IT corridor, at Pudupakkam (Chennai).

Initiator of the printing business was R Jayaraman who started it by outsourcing the jobs, and later seeing the increase in customer needs, put up his own press with indigenous letterpress machines, operating from a 750 sq ft space. Entering this area of operation as a commercial printer catering to the local requirements of brochures, leaflets, annual reports and other materials to clients which included leading corporate houses, banks, advertising agencies, etc, Multivista slowly migrated into manufacturing of books since last decade with the support of some of the leading publishers in India and invested extensively in both printing and binding machines enabling them to fulfill the increasing requirements for books. Previously, Multivista Print Division was situated in the ‘integrated print house’ in a multi-storeyed building at Velachery Road in city limits. With increase in international business, they preferred to be centrally located between airport and sea port for better logistics, and relocated at Pudupakkam three years ago.

Cutting-edge infrastructure…

Being one of the leading printing facilities in India, the company is equipped with state-of-the-art printing and binding machines, along with equally efficient prepress having a Heidelberg SupraSetter CtP of size 940 mm X 1,143 mm. For single-colour, two-colour and four-colour printing, their machines include: Heidelberg CD 102 – four-colour of size 711 mm X 1,016 mm (28” X 40”), Heidelberg Speedmaster SM 102 – four-colour of size 711 mm X 1,016 mm (28” X 40”) with two-colour perfecting, two Ryobi 620 - four-colour of size 625 mm X 920 mm (25” X 36”), Heidelberg Speedmaster SM 74 – four-colour of size 508 mm X 762 mm (20” X 30”), two Heidelberg Speedmaster SM 102 – four-colour of size 711 mm X 1,016 mm (28” X 40”) with single-colour perfecting, Roland Parva two-colour of size 584 mm X 914 mm (23” X 36”), Heidelberg SORD – single-colour of size 635 mm X 914 mm (25” X 36”), and Heidelberg SORD – single-colour of size 508 mm X 762 mm (20” X 30”).

For binding and finishing, the company is equipped with an in-line Kolbus soft-cover binding machine along with:

12-station gatherer with signature identification facility, stacker for removal of gathered sections for off-line sewing whenever sewing is required, book block feeder in the perfect binder, 32-clamp perfect binder with hot glue facility, extended conveyor with on-line hologram-pasting facility, three-knife trimmer, and stacker for removal of finished books, having capacity of 8,000 books per hour. They also have a complete finishing system (off-line) along with: two Stahl folding machines, one Diploma folding machine, two Muller Martini Inventa Plus automatic section sewing machines, one Muller Martini online saddle stitching machine, Polygraph – 18-station collating machine (side gathering) etc.

Ensuring quality with quantity…

On asking about total capacity of their overall production, Jayaraman replied, “With our Kolbus line able to produce 8,000 books per hour, in one long run job we were able to produce 1,25,000 books in three shifts. We can safely put our average daily production at 70,000 to 80,000 books a day. The end customer sees our product as a book, while we see the results of our quest for perfection in every page. We are committed to provide cover-to-cover excellence.”

As far as quality is concerned, Karthik (Six Sigma certified professional) added, “Multivista is an ISO 9001 certified company (certified by TUV). The quality management systems in Multivista are a set of well-defined procedures, checklists, and guidelines, which address every step in the delivery workflow. We conduct regular internal quality audits to verify compliance. Based on the analysis of our internal audit and the feedback received from our clients, we implement effective process controls at every stage of the production process. As part of our quality policy, we believe in investing towards state-of-the-art printing and binding machines and use the highest quality inputs to meet our clients’ expectations.”

Multivista has also set up a separate export-oriented unit – EOU, aimed at facilitating delivery of books to Indian book sellers on behalf of international publishers, as there is considerable demand within India for foreign books. Instead of directly importing books from foreign publishers, those received from EOUs, but printed for foreign publishers bring in a substantial saving in freight element for the import of books.

Going beyond…

Asked about their expansions plans, Rajesh quipped in, “We have implemented SAP as our ERP backbone which will further support our operations with tight integration across all functional departments and provide all our clients with real-time information. We have initiated dialogues with major print machinery manufacturers regarding various options to enhance our pre-press, print and bind capacities. Today, we are looking towards further growth by investing to augment our capacity and enabling us to expand our services to our clients in both domestic and international markets.”

In this issue, let us understand how workflow and environment can be controlled for optimum quality book production.

Workflow and environment

Workflow is the depiction of a sequence of operations carried out using one or more simple or complex mechanisms. Bookbinding workflow, begins where printing ends. The key links of the adhesive binding workflow are: folding, gathering, binding and trimming. There may be many other pre, post and intermediary steps. However, an important link that is invisible, but highly influential is: environment. Ambient temperature and relative humidity play a major role in workflow.

Acclimatisation

Paper is a substance that constantly interacts with the environment to balance humidity. In addition to this, while printing, moisture is either added (coldset) or removed (heatset). This leads to problems in the bookbinding workflow.

Let’s understand this more, with examples. Printed sheets in a pile are moved from an air-conditioned room to an area where the humidity is not controlled, like the open shed where the folding machines have been installed. In a pile, the edges of the paper are exposed to the ambient conditions while the central part remains unexposed. This leads to an uneven gain/loss in moisture at the edges in comparison to the inner part. The paper gains moisture, if the relative humidity is high and vice versa. Any gain or loss in moisture starts at the edges. When there is gain in moisture, the paper expands only at the edges leading to what is called as wavy edges, while a loss in moisture - leads to “cockling.”

In both cases, the paper loses its flatness and hence its machinability. It is difficult to feed such a paper in any machine for further processing. In an automatic folding machine, this leads to problems in sheet pickup, entry into the buckles/pockets, wrinkling etc. This results in wastage, increased downtime and slower production rates. Sometimes the problem is aggravated and this makes it impossible to run the paper in the machine.

Remedies for acclimitisation

Allow sufficient time after printing, before one starts to fold. This will help the moisture content across the paper to be evenly spread. This will acclimatise the paper to the folding machine environment. The acclimatisation time can be between 8-12 hours depending upon ambient conditions. Ideally, the press and post-press environment must be maintained at the same level of humidity and temperature conditions. This will help save precious time which is needed on acclimatization.

Extreme climatic conditions

Moisture is an important component of paper. A moisture content of about 8-10 percent is necessary as it gives the flexibility to process the paper. There can be a lot of problems when paper is exposed to extreme climatic conditions. In very humid conditions, like the rainy season, the paper stock can become flimsy and difficult to process. The degree of stiffness required for optimum processing will be missing. In extreme dry weather like winter, paper can become brittle and crack especially when folded against the grain. In case of coated papers, this can lead to generation of dust.

The ideal environment for paper processing is at temperatures of 20-25°C and a relative humidity of 50-55 percent. In these conditions the paper poses the right degree of flexibility and stiffness required for processing.

Static electricity

Dry weather also leads to static electricity. In normal atmospheric conditions, the surrounding air would have neutralised this static charges, but in extremely dry weather, this leads to static electricity. This leads to paper in a pile sticking to each other. This means, multiple sheets enter the buckles of a folding machine, which results in frequent stopping of the machine. To solve this problem, one needs to employ ionisers or neutralizing bars. Both these technologies are helpful in taking out the static charges.

(To be continued in the next issue…)