Reiner Mittelbach, CEO of Ifra, Germany inaugurated the Ifra-RIND Material Testing and Research Centre in Chennai, the first  independently run centre for testing newsprint and news ink in India, on 22 January 2007. The Ifra-RIND Centre located in the RIND premises in Taramani, Chennai is the first independent professional facility offering testing of newspaper printing materials and research services.

The centre has the following testing equipments: Precision Balance from Switzerland, Printablity Tester from Netherlands, and Spectrophotometer from USA and Grindometer from Germany.

Initially, the following testing services are offered:
Basic characteristics - grammage
Printabilty testing - Ink requirement, print through, colour picking, printing penetration and mottle and set off
Optical characteristics - Tone value, shade, brightness, opacity, print density and fineness of ink grind

Other equipment such as spectrometer for paper, tensile tester, digital micrometer, roughness tester, tear tester, rheometer, tack meter, abrasion tester and ash content meter for testing news shade, tensile strength, sheet thickness, surface roughness, tearing strength, viscosity, ink tack, rub-off and ash content will be added later.

The centre has plans to undertake research services with the objective of improving the overall quality of newspaper printing. It will undertake studies on standardising newspaper consumables, and trends in Indian newspaper printing. These activities will also cover magazine printing and other newspaper-printing related areas. The services will be open to any newspaper, magazine, or commercial printer offering printing services to the publishing industry.

The centre hopes to become a 'Regional Quality Competence Centre' for testing newspaper printing materials in the entire South Asian region. The centre is supported by ABP, Deccan Herald , Dinamalar , Malayala Manorama , Manipal Media Network, Mathrubhumi , The Hindu , DIC Inks, and Micro Inks.

The Ifra-RIND Material Testing and Research Centre is an initiative of Ifra, the association for newspaper and media publishing. It operates out of its head quarters in Darmstadt, Germany and its main task is to assist its members to keep pace with the rapid changes in technology. The Ifra India office is based in Chennai with more than 35 members. Ifra India organises an annual conference, seminars, workshops dedicated to the publishing industry and also offers consulting and training programmes catering to the needs of the industry.

ICONS, the coldset colour on newsprint standardization project for Indian newspapers is one such effort driven by the needs of the industry. Moreover, Ifra is organising its renowned ‘IfraExpo' for the first time outside Europe in India, as “IfraExpo India in 2007” from September 4 to7 2007 at the Chennai Trade Centre. Ifra also plans to launch its ‘National Advertisement Delivery System (NADS)' where advertisers can digitally send advertisements to multiple publications using a common portal.