Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
There is nothing like waking up on Wednesday morning with a steaming cup of tea and your GulfWeekly.
But many readers may not be fully aware of what goes on behind the scenes to print their favourite read.
The stringent night schedule of the army of men, the co-ordination of various departments within the organisation and the precise workings of the massive printing machines all work in sync so that the crisply folded sheet of printed paper reaches the newsstands and the doorsteps of our family of readers.
In fact, a typical printing press is humming with activity every single day of the week, 365 days in a year. Work never stops and it takes a dedicated team of workers to keep the presses running efficiently.
Dar Akhbar Al Khaleej has a mixture of small printing machines and the state-of-the-art enormous machines that print our sister daily newspapers.
Technical teams carry out painstaking maintenance work on a daily basis to keep the presses rolling.
“We have to be spot on and correct the first time. This is the nature of printing,” says P Madhava Rao, operations manager at Dar Akhbar Al Khaleej.
A typical night shift to print the daily newspapers starts at 10pm and runs right through till 6am.
Adrenalin runs high when the rollers set in motion and the team of 17 people supervised by Sudhakar Poojary go about doing their specific jobs.
“Every night we print many editions of daily Arabic and English newspapers, approximately 160,000 copies in all. In addition to this, once a week we print around 20,000 weekly newspapers.
“It is challenging because we have to work within a stringent timetable to get the papers to the distributors on time.
“Publishing and printing is a very deadline-oriented profession. If the news desk doesn’t meet its deadlines then pre-press is late which mean that printing is delayed consequently delaying the entire process of getting the paper to the readers on time,” added Mr Poojary above the deafening noise of the press.
“We have checks and balances in place for the smooth running of the press. In case of a minor problem like blanket damage or air leakage we are equipped to deal with it ourselves but in case of a major problem – which are few and far apart – decisions need to be taken in the middle of the night by higher authorities because we cannot delay the printing process at any cost,” he says insistently.
“All the departments in the organisation are connected via a network from the design department to the pre-press division that make the aluminium plates for printing. Every title has a deadline and a 45-minute delay could mean a delay for other titles. Printing is slotted in a very tight pre-assigned schedule,” says Mr Rao.
There is clear division of labour and each team member sets about doing their duties with precision. To an onlooker it seems a Herculean task but the people involved seem comfortable with their daily duties. “It is routine work for us,” says one standing in front of a high tech touch screen monitor. “It’s a continuous process and everyone has a role to play,” says the other adjusting a knob of one of the machines.
The entire process is computerised except for processes like loading the roll of paper, ink and removing the plates. As the printed paper comes out of the press, Mr Poojary checks the copy for correct shade of colour.
Technicians adjust the colour concentrations from the touch screen monitors. Any errors have to be fixed on the spot to get the desired result.
There is a flurry of activity in every corner of the machine as the team members’ rush to match their speed with the speed of the mechanical contraption because once the press starts rolling it does not stop.
Special Report
By Asma Salman
asma.salman@gulfweekly.com
