Financial Times

Advanced printing technology at printing fair
Though printing has become an essential component of today's modern life, most people are unaware how a printed product reaches their hands.
The Sri Lanka Association of Printers (SLAP) once in two years holds a Print Competition, an exhibition of the collection of printed matter by its members, and picks a winner. Recently, this year’s Print Products Exhibition was held in Colombo.

When the exhibition opened, a special competition was launched amongst the visitors in the “Live Run” category. Ms Gayani Karunaratne was the lucky winner and her picture was taken, fed into a machine and in minutes a calendar printed with her picture was handed over to her proving the high tech digital efficiency of modern printing machines.

Kirthi Gunawardane, President, SLAP told The Sunday Times FT, that printing has become an essential part of life today and the innovative digital technology has made printing easy to handle in addition to saving time and energy. "Photographs taken minutes ago could be transformed into print with colour separation and other techniques attended in the machine instantaneously. It is actually just like magic," he said.

Printers earlier complained that though they had all the modern facilities, skills and equipment to compete in the international export market, some clients used to get their printing done abroad. Gunawardane said that this scenario has now changed. The work of Sri Lankan printers is second to none against other developed countries. Local printers are also getting orders from various countries.

Gunawardene said the printing industry could get steady orders from overseas if the government provided duty free concessions on imports of ink, paper and other needs. He urged the government to waive the customs duty on these items and if it is done, the country could earn several billions of rupees in foreign exchange.

Prem Nambiar, owner of a printing company in India, explaining the advantages of digital printing said that the difference between digital printing and offset printing is that digital printing is extremely useful for quick personalized printing work. He said that it is just like the use of computers.

Earlier people complained about computers, but today it is accepted as useful and likewise is digital printing. The climax of the entire exercise of the Printers was the Awards Night. Gunaratne Offset Ltd won the coveted Overall Printer of the Year Award by receiving three awards of Excellence, two awards of Distinction and four awards of merit with a total of 52 points. The awards categories were: Pictorial Calendars (Single Sheet), Pictorial Calenders (Multi Sheet), Pictorial Diaries, Office Calendars (Pictorial), Office Calendars (others), Management Diaries & Planners, Other Diaries (Slim, Desk, Pocket etc), Greeting Cards and Invitations, Books, Posters, Annual Reports, Periodicals & Magazines, Brochures, Folders and Leaflets, Cartons, Labels & Tags, Point of Sale Material, Flexo Rigid Packaging, Flexo Flexible Packaging, Metal Decoration, Continuous Forms Printing, Stationery and Letter Heads and Visiting Cards.

Treasury Secretary Dr P B Jayasundara, Chief Guest at the awards ceremony, said Sri Lankan entrepreneurs should be encouraged to think globally. He said that the SLAP President had referred to a Rs 3 billion market waiting outside Sri Lanka and said he would suggest to the National Council of Economic Development to make some budget proposals (to the Treasury) drawing attention to this matter.

He said the printing industry with 4,000 printers and 40,000 employed is a large industry and suggested that it should organize itself slightly better in terms of the global market.

He said the government has invited the business community, trade unions and other professionals, citizens and concerned persons to send in their proposals for the formulation of the forthcoming budget, and invited the printing industry to also send in their proposals.

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