After its investment in 25 KBA Prisma 4 x 1 printing towers, the Bhaskar Group has also added thirteen Krause LS Jet CtP lines to its shopping cart. Several years ago when the Bhaskar-Zee Television combine launched its English daily DNA in Mumbai, it was with Agfa thermal CtP devices. The group has subsequently purchased other brands of CtP devices but has now made a major commitment to high speed violet CtP systems from Krause who are also the preferred supplier to several large newspaper publishers in the country.

In an attempt to upgrade quality and standardise at all its sites previous CtP installations will be replaced by the thirteen complete Krause LS Jet and BlueFin lines, of which five have already been delivered. The remaining eight CtP systems are to be installed at various printing sites throughout India within the next few weeks.

The top management of the Bhaskar Group attended Ifra 2007 at Vienna and were convinced by the speed and quality of the LS Jet as well as the strong installed base of Krause CtPs in India. The reported service levels also apparently impacted the decision. The group publishes Dainik Bhaskar in Hindi, Divya Bhaskar in Gujarati and DNA in English.

Bennett Coleman publishers of the Times of India have added one more Kruase LSJet 300 line for its Sahibabad plant in the Delhi National Capital Region from Krause to the five lines ordered a few weeks ago. This now takes the count of Krause CtP’s at Bennett Coleman to twenty-eight. Bennett Coleman has been a Krause customer of plate exposing systems even before it bought violet CtPs.

The company’s flagship English daily the Times of India now claims to have a combined national print run of 2.4 million with the group consuming almost 20 per cent of the newsprint consumption in the country. The company has been torridly expanding its print capacity in terms of speed and colour pagination with the ongoing installation of more than a hundred manroland Regioman towers across its plants including it new Taloja plant just outside Mumbai.