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If you want to be innovative,
you have to change your
perspective and look at the
big picture.
When it comes to digital
newspaper printing,
Mengis Druck und Verlag
AG from the Valais
area of Switzerland is a
ground-breaking pioneer.
This daring innovator
relies on UPM’s paper
quality for an immaculate
digital finish.
Mengis has been printing digitally since June 2015. The machine can produce up to 5,000 24–32 page copies per hour.
An investment that sends
a clear signal
Text: Carola Malzner
Photos: Mengis Group
ast year Mengis Group came up
with an innovation that made the
industry sit up and take notice: Its
newspaper Walliser Bote offers an ex-
citing example of the fresh ideas that
can be put to work with digital printing
technology.
As for the benefits of this technology,
Nicolas Mengis, Chairman of the Ex-
ecutive Board at Mengis Group, has a
wealth of arguments ready – most nota-
bly the ability to individualize content.
While printing plates can only produce
uniform copies, digital printing enables
a variety of images, text sections or
names to be inserted in the same print
cycle.
“This level of individualization is
hugely important for our customers in
terms of advertising effectiveness and
customer loyalty,” explains Mengis.
Further plus points are that the print
quality is consistently high and the vol-
ume of waste generated during proof-
ing is a massive 95% lower.”
Welcome to the future
The market has spoken: everything
has to be faster and resources have to
be utilized flexibly. Mengis is tapping
into this trend by investing in a three-
part digital printing system comprising
an HP T490 inkjet press, a downstream
MAN-FoldLine for folding work and a
Müller-Martini-Alphaliner for putting
it all together.
To print Walliser Bote they annually
use around 800 tonnes of UPM News
L
Nicolas Mengis is Chairman of the Ex-
ecutive Board and principal sharehold-
er of Mengis Group in Visp, in the Swiss
canton of Valais. The family-owned com-
pany employees a total of 230 people at
Mengis Druck AG and Mengis Medien
AG.
“In addition to publishing our own
Walliser Bote, we also provide con-
tract digital printing services to cus-
tomers such as a weekly betting paper
in France,” states Mengis.
The new technology and the ability
to produce top-quality print with a res-
olution of 2400 dpi also increases the
revenue-generating potential of one-
off contract printing jobs – normally
a business with extremely tight mar-
gins.
Seeing the big picture
“If you want to exploit all the bene-
fits, the ideal job is a publication with
a high page count printed in a run of
up to 5,000 copies with lots of inter-
nal bespoke modifications,” explains
Mengis.
Even so, it is surprising that Mengis
Group opted for digital production of
Walliser Bote, which has a daily print
run of 21,000. With the digital pro-
cess, ink still easily accounts for 30%
of costs.
“If you want to be innovative, you
have to change your perspective and
look at the big picture. We weren’t
looking to become cheaper. What we
wanted is to actively tackle the chal-
lenges in our industry and open up new
markets,” says Mengis.
This forward-looking investment,
which significantly diversifies the
company’s offering to customers and
strengthens its foothold on the market,
is more than a good start.
from their long-term paper suppli-
er, UPM Steyrermühl mill in Austria.
“We are also using UPM Digi Fine Jet
90 g/m2 paper for other print jobs. We
were impressed by the quality and
price of this paper, which is optimized
for high-speed inkjet printing,” says
Mengis.
UPM NEWS 15