The combined Manugraph DGM is at drupa for the first time. This time the stand contains products from the factories in both the US and India although there is no live demonstration of a running press. The Manugraph Frontline shaftless 60,000 cph press shown running was actually one of the highlights of drupa04 for mid-size newspapers around the world. The Frontline has now come into production with the commissioning of press lines in South India at plants belonging to the leading English daily The Hindu and the leading Malayalam daily Malayalam Manorama. A Frontline tower is also running at the DGM plant in Pennsylvania for demonstrations.

At drupa, Manugraph has introduced a new single-width single circumference press -- the 430 Max built in the Dauphin County Pennsylvania plant. The shaftless press has a maximum web width of 36-inches and a capacity of up to 45,000 copies an hour and is outfitted with blanket cylinder bearer rings, stainless steel cylinders with tapered roller bearings and ManuColor remote ink key control and CIP3 ink pre-setting options. The 430 Max also sports an 8-roller ink train with two form rollers and two Rilsan-coated oscillators.

The 430 Max was designed by the DGM research and development team in the US and it will be built in India for supply to global markets. It is designed to take on the Goss Magnum presses that Goss builds in its joint venture plant in Shanghai. The target market is mid-sized newspapers' that require increased colour pagination and automation features to produce high quality. However this target market may not have the high circulation or advertising revenues that justify the speeds and attendant costs of presses above 45,000 copies an hour.

Also shown at the stand is another product of this marriage -- the DGM 1240 jaw folder that has been built at the Kohlapur plant in Western India with the necessary adaptation for metric size cut-offs that many global markets require. The DGM side of the company seems impressed by the superb quality of this adaptation and manufacture of their original design by their Indian colleagues. The 1240 folder will continue to be built in both plants depending on proximity to market.

At a brief meeting at the large Manguraph stand showing the widest range of single-width newspaper product at the show, Pradeep Shah revealed two sales at drupa -- a Malaysian customer has ordered three Manugraph presslines consisting of 24 Hiline and Cityline towers and six 1240 folders. A Latin American customer has ordered an Advantage II press line. Pradeep Shah is clearly focused when he says, “The mission of MDGM is to achieve world dominance in single-circumference, single-width presses. Moreover, the US and India happen to be the two largest markets for this range of products.”

Separation from manroland
Just prior to drupa08, manroland and Manugraph called off their mutual cooperation that has spanned several years, the manufacture of the Uniset in India for only that market, and sales of Manugraph presses by the former MAN Roland in several geographies. Our view is that this separation was bound to happen sooner or later. Manugraph may have learned a lot from manroland but the Uniset 2 x 2 is not suited to the Indian market that currently prefers 4 x1 presses. In fact the few Indian newspapers that bought the Uniset always ran it as a straight press.

Equally, manroland should have learned something from Manugraph but it still seems overly committed to larger and larger web presses -- a rarified market that cannot hold for all eight major international web offset manufacturers. At the widely attended manroland press conference on the day prior to the drupa opening, the parting of the ways with Manugraph was mentioned and one intrepid European journalist did ask about it. However the answer was merely that manroland would find a way to address the market for smaller presses.

When we met Pradeep Shah at the Manugraph stand in Hall 6 he was quite candid. He made it clear that although the separation with manroland was and is extremely amicable, it was Manugraph that initiated it because “the synergies were less and less.” This was bound to happen after Manugraph acquired DGM, which had its own double circumference press and folder.

In the meanwhile, Manugraph is practically compelled to manufacture a 70,000 cph web press partly because of the unfair Indian customs law that allows import of these machines at only 5 per cent duty while other presses attract 29 per cent. Fortunately its’ DGM staff have very good experience with larger and stronger folders and print units that will be useful for the design and manufacture of wider and faster presses.

Horse and carriage
Both sides of the Indo-American MDGM organisation have excellent manufacturing, servicing and selling skills in international markets. In the past two years, the Indian side has had to cope with spectacular demand in the subcontinent, while the American side has had to cope with a flat US market.

The combined company will have to continue to collectively cope with the myths of superior German metallurgy and precision engineering. In fact even the billion dollar Goss suffers from this same misperception in markets including India. The real challenge is the use of new technologies to create appropriate products competitively. This cannot be done profitably except for a global market that is deep.

The depth for MDGM comes from the fact that small and medium newspapers in democracies grow organically in terms of editions, pages, colour and circulation – they create their own dynamic aftermarket – and the largest market for newspaper presses. In geographically large and linguistically diverse democracies such as India it makes sense to print a million copies at anywhere from seven to thirty centres on smaller presses especially when the press has to be stopped every half an hour to change a page for local news from a particular district. This will be done on larger presses with high-speed inkjet changing perhaps half a page in the future, but there are only a hundred newspapers in India and perhaps another five hundred in the whole world who need to do this and are ready to make this kind of investment or gamble.

In the past, DGM outsourced castings from Taiwan and continues to do so. This is no different than Goss outsourcing from its plants from suppliers around the world including its joint venture in Shanghai. In fact global manufacture and service is the key to its survival. DGM has also been a beneficiary of good access to quality bought-out parts and components and assemblies such as autopasters, compressors, pneumatics, ovens and curing devices. In contrast Manugraph has had to build many components on its own or source these as a first time user from International and Indian suppliers developing new capacities in India.
 
Nevertheless the integration is meaningful. Marriages always require hard work and this one is no different. Manugraph and DGM can take inspiration from Huber’s acquisition of Micro Inks in India -- described at their drupa press conference as, “A marriage and integration process that has exceeded expectations.”

Although consolidation may be necessary among the larger manufacturers in the newspaper press industry, considered opinion also says that diversity in approach by separate companies is equally important -- even for the European, Japanese and North American markets. As for the rest of the three-quarters of the world, the MDGM marriage is a vital sign of the still growing and dynamic parts of global newspaper markets.

In respect to the future of Manugraph, Pradeep Shah says, “I don’t want to export cheap labour. On the contrary I want to export technology and our future strength is going to be the R&D of both plants. This is why, for the first time, we flew the MDGM R&D team from Pennsylvania to drupa.”

With inputs from MVP and CH