UPM_News_2016

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

If you want to be innovative, you have to change your perspective and look at the big picture.

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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.

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- 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 ing is a massive 95% lower.” Welcome to the future

“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.

Text: Carola Malzner Photos: Mengis Group

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. www.mengisgruppe.ch

from their long-term paper suppli- er, UPM Steyrermühl mill in Austria. “We are also using UPM Digi Fine Jet 90 g/m 2 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.

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