|
|
 |
| |
Printing
Services |
| |
Introduction
It is accepted that the Chinese invented the printing press
in the fifth century. A.D. The Vajira Sutta is a Mahayana Buddhist
text that is said to be the first book printed by the Chinese in 868
A.D. They also invented the systems of composing words in 1050 A.D.
In the western world, the invention of printing from movable types
dates from 1441, the composition of words was invented by a German,
Johann Gutenberg at Mainz in 1455. The book title Catholican, a 42
line Bible was printed in this press.
Although the Portuguese introduced to Sri Lanka the use of ink and
paper for writing, the printing techniques was introduced by the Dutch
who took possession of the maritime provinces of Sri Lanka in 1640.
In 1707 wooden blocks were used by the Dutch for printing. After initial
experiments carried out by Gabriel Schade, the press was established
in Galle by the Dutch. The first document published through the Dutch
press in Sri Lanka was a notification named plakkaat, on 5th April
1737. The Dutch published the first book on 6th September 1737 in
the Sinhala Language. It was a prayer book with 46 pages. During the
Dutch period, all administrative orders were printed in this press.
At the British Capitulation in 1796, the Dutch press fell into the
hands of the British. The British dismantled the Dutch press at Galle
and re-established it in Colombo. The first publication of the newly
established printing press was the Government Gazette issued on 15th
March 1802. It is recorded that the first English Newspaper, Colombo
Journal was also printed at this press in 1832.
The missionaries, who arrived in the island at the beginning of 1812,
also established printing presses in the country. The Weslyan Press
printed and published the first Sri Lanka journal ‘Masika Thagga’
. In 1832 and ‘Shathra Nidanaya’ in 1846. The Ceylon Observer
established in 1834 was the first independent newspaper published
in Ceylon and it was succeeded by The Ceylon Observer and Commercial
Advertiser. The Lakmini Pahana newspaper was printed in 1862 at a
press owned by Hendrick Perera. However, the first unregistered Sinhala
newspaper, Lanka Lokaya was printed on 10th September 1860 at the
Lanka Loka Press in galle. The first Sinhala Buddhist press was established
in July 1862 and was known as the Lankopakara Press. The establishment
of this press was a result of the Buddhist revival movement during
the second half of the nineteenth century. Ven Bulathgama Dharmalankara
Sri Sumanatissa Maha Thera, the pioneer of the establishment of the
Buddhist press, received the financial assistance of the King of Siam
in establishing this press.
Printing was first introduced to Sri Lanka through the Port of Galle
during the period of Dutch. The first known press was Gall Printers,
situated in the Port of Galle and since then printing has diversified
into great highest for Sri Lanka to boast as an industry, which can
be compared to the Printing industry of the world.
At the initial stages of the printing industry, Sri Lanka had only
the Letter Press process of printing and today the printing industry
has diversified into Offset, Flexo, Gravure, Silk Screen and to the
Digital printing industry. In the early eras of agricultural based
industrialization namely, the Tea, Coconut and the Rubber industry,
printing was used to the daily needs of the stationery and of course
in the 50’s for newspapers and textbooks printing. At the era,
printing was rather primitive in Sri Lanka comparatively to that eras,
were international printing market. Value addition into produce and
products in Sri Lanka since the 70’s gave a turbo boost into
printing industry to diversify from the colonial era printing to the
modern days printing industry.
Today’s printing industry in Sri Lanka is mainly based on publicity,
material and packaging to value addition of Sri Lanka’s produce.
Compared to book printing which was more popular in the 50’s
and 60’s printing industry is now diversifying from offset too
much more sophisticated Gravure and Flexo and today’s trend
is that. Although most people feel that the printing industry saturated
and also strongly believe there is ample opportunity for people who
are willing to diversify in to specialized sectors, rather than trying
to do what others do and make undue competition, killing the printing
industry.
In a nutshell there is a great future for people who are willing to
specialize and not willing to compromise for quality due to competition.
Overview of the Industry
The printing sector has several areas, which has considerable export
potential. Presently print packaging, tags and labels are supplied
mainly to the exporters of tea and garments. Therefore most of these
packaging exports are going as indirect exports. There are several
printers who are also exporting print packaging materials and labels
and tags directly.
At present, there are about 4,000 printing establishments providing
job opportunities to over 40,000 people. There are two printing schools
in Sri Lanka, namely, Sri Lanka Institute of Printing Ingrin Institute
of Printing and Graphics Arts at which many school-leavers are being
trained.
Support services to the printing industry begin with typesetting,
designing and page make up services, then onto printing and finally
ends with print finishing and binding (either perfect bound or case
bound). High-speed perfect binders, three knife trimmers and case
binding are now available in Sri Lanka. As a result, Sri Lankan printers
are now in a position to undertake any type of book printing. Currently,
manual case binding is widely used in Sri Lanka due to the availability
of low cost labour. Sri Lankan printers will provide a total service
package, allowing the country to gain a reputation in this industry
overseas.
Leading Sri Lankan printers are well equipped with multi colour printing
machines including Heidelberg speed masters with CPC controls. Sri
Lankan labour rates when compared to far eastern countries are comparatively
lower. Leading Sri Lankan printing companies work to productivity
levels which are considered highly acceptable by European standards.
The Sri Lankan print industry continues to enjoy a pre-eminent positioning
as a major supplier of tea tags and envelopes throughout the SAARC
region, the Middle East and Far East.
One of the other prominent areas of printing exports is printed stationery
such as diaries etc. The Sri Lankan stationery products industry,
has today reached international standards. Exercise books, diaries,
albums, greeting cards, handmade paper items, pens and pencils, artist’s
material are products currently been exported largely to the European
Union. Export of albums has become the leading export products. Keeping
with the present trend Sri Lankan manufacturers have expanded their
range of products to include a variety of novel environmentally friendly
items from paper.
Facilities available in the Sri Lanka Printing Industry
Typesetting
The typesetting industry in Sri Lanka has
been growing steadily since 1986 with the number of the professional
digital typesetting installations increasing from 4 to 40.
Sri Lankan typesetters support the local printing industry in its
domestic activities and the export sector by offering a very high
level of service in both quality and quick turnaround time.
The introduction of the 3rd generation direct entry typesetters opened
a new market in the country where newspaper establishments as well
as large-scale commercial printers invested heavily in professional
equipment. On-screen composition using preview facilities and proofing
down to laser printers opened new avenues for cost effective typesetting.
These technologies have helped them to produce much better results
maintaining high quality output.
However, a few of the independent typesetters have ventured into desktop
publishing centers and many printers with in house typesetting have
gone the same way. The Sri Lankan typesetting industry thus recognizing
DTP sees that the adoption of latest technology is the key to staying
ahead of competition.
|
|
With
the introduction of 4th generation equipment, typesetters have invested
in technology and equipment. Most of them are now getting into personal
computer based front ends such as Macintosh and IBM PC’s. Clients
can communicate by diskette depending on their own technological resources
and the Sri Lankan typesetters are now equipped to deal with their
typesetting in any word processing language.
With their advent into DTP, today typesetters have expanded their
operations offering page make up services as well. Using software
packages such as Aldus Pagemaker, Image processing equipment allows
operators to integrate pictures with text.
Sri Lankan printers and DTP Centres have realized the opportunities
available both local and exports even though these services represent
a major investment in technology and training. But it is an investment,
which definitely will pay off all parties.
Colour Separations
The first scanner house was established
in Sri Lanka in 1979 and since then colour separation has developed
to internationally accepted standards.
Whilst meeting the entire domestic demands and also being a significant
component of the printing industry’s export marketing drive,
Sri Lankan colour separation houses are endeavoring to build a reputation
overseas. So far, they have been successful in penetrating markets
in Sweden, United Kingdom, USA, United Arab Emirates and New Zealand.
Leading colour separation houses in Sri Lanka now accept digital files
and have the capability to incorporate high end scans and output direct
digital films. These modern systems have the capability of doing sophisticated
colour correction and image manipulation. They have also eliminated
several manual steps with electronic planning, stripping and step
and repeat.
Several proofing methods are available, from flat bed machine proofs
to direct digital proofs.
Due to the liberalization policies of the Government of Sri Lanka,
raw materials such as films, pre-sensitized plates, chemicals of world-renowned
brands such as Kodak, Fuji, Sakura, Agfa, Polychrome, Dupont, etc.
are freely available in the market.
Sri Lankan scanner houses equipped with
sophisticated machinery are manned by skilled and experienced personnel
who monitor quality at every stage of production.
Offset Printing
Since the introduction of open market
policies in Sri Lanka printers have ventured into more sophisticated
offset litho and other printing machinery.
With Sri Lanka’s accelerated development of its infrastructure
and its exports of printing services gradually increasing, print buyers
worldwide will be attracted to Sri Lanka with the assurance of quality,
price and timely delivery.
In the recent past, the Sri Lankan printing industry has seen a continual
investment in technology resulting in the expansion of offset capacity
with vast improvements in quality. Today, one can see not only single
and two colour printing machines but four to five colour machines
equipped with computer colour controls.
While book printing and commercial printing are major export sectors,
quality offset printing of packaging material especially tea cartons
and garment tags and labels of which almost 90% is exported is a considerable
export activity. Exports of Ceylon Tea, which is a household name
worldwide, and garments are two major foreign exchange earners for
Sri Lanka.
With the advent of exports and optimistic future export market prospects,
leading Sri Lankan printers are contemplating increasing their offset
capacity by installing more four to five colour printing machines
with an inline coating system.
This decade should see a more stable and continued growth for Sri
Lankan export printing with the passwords being quality, competitive
price and timely delivery.
Print Finishing
and Book Binding
Printing in Sri Lanka would soon
be called a total service industry. Support services to the printing
industry begin with typesetting, designing and page make up services
through printing and finally ending with print finishing and binding
either perfect bound or case bound.
A recent development in the Sri Lankan printing industry has been
the setting up of Trading Houses to provide services in print finishing
and book binding similar to that of typesetting and colour separations.
These Trading Houses offer services in inline and offline UV Varnishing,
laminating and bookbinding. High-speed perfect binders, three knife
trimmers and recently case binding are now available in Sri Lanka.
As a result of this Sri Lankan printers are now in a position to undertake
any type of book printing. Currently manual case binding is widely
used in Sri Lanka solely due to the availability of low cost labour.
Sri Lankan printers will go all out in providing a total service package,
which would include the extra service that will soon earn Sri Lanka
a reputation overseas.
Web Offset Printing
In the field of web offset printing,
Sri Lankan printers can offer high-speed web offset printing facilities
capable of producing broadsheet and tabloid publications.
There are carried out on 2 lines of presses consisting of Harris and
Goss community presses.
Web offset printers can produce broadsheet publications with a mximum
of 48 pages with 8 pages colour printed in 2 sections on 96 pages
of of a tabloid size publication with 16 pages of process colour.
In addition to printing of newspapers, facilities for printing of
books and magazines are also available.
Gravure Printing
Gravure printing has made great strides
since its introduction to Sri Lanka. Today, gravure printing is used
to print on paper and board and cellophane stock to a maximum width
of 1000 mm, and printing on reel to reel up to a maximum of 6 colours.
A useful facility in this field is that Rotary Cutting and Creasing
can be done inline along with printing.
Gravure printing is currently used in Sri Lanka for printing of magazines;
packaging materials (paper board and cellophane) paper wrappers etc.
Carton Gluing
Printing of packaging materials is
a major component of the Sri Lankan printing industry. Most printing
establishments engaged in packaging possess automatic Folder Gluer
machines capable of and gluing standard straight prefolding line folding
cartons, crash lock bottom cartons, double wall cartons, 4 corner
trays, 6 corner strays and a variety of special types of cartons.
Screen Printing
Screen-printing in Sri Lanka has
come a long way since the 1960’s. Today, this technology is
widely used in this country to print on almost any substrate possible.
This includes printing on paper and board, wood, plastic, glass, metal
and textiles using both water and volatile solvent based inks. These
range from rubberized, plastisol and puff inks.
Sri Lanka Association of Printers www.lankaprint.org
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
