Attendees at last week's meeting, which was held at Apple's Executive Briefing Centre in London, were offered insights into the savings being achieved through the implementation of soft proofing by both publishers.

Mark Tamsett, group production pre-media manager at Bauer, said that the company had moved "out of the dark ages" in terms of its proofing and colour management, achieving "highly significant savings" in the process.

He revealed the company's inefficient proofing process had been a key issue for Bauer when it acquired the consumer magazines of Emap in February 2008.

It has since achieved 90% soft proofing across its 16 London titles and 99% soft proofing across its 35 Peterborough titles.
Bauer, which chose Dalim Dialogue  for its soft proofing,  has also, in partnership with its print and repro suppliers, moved towards the ISO 12647/2 standard for colour management.

BBCM, which also uses Dalim Dialogue, made its move to soft proofing as part of its Smart Repro project to halve its £1.1m annual pre-press spend.

Production director Mal Skelton revealed the company had invested around £100,000 in kit and employed 10 experienced repro staff to bring its pre-press in-house and achieve £500,000 annual cost savings.

He said: "We've made great strides in removing hard copy proofs from internal operations and the only hard copy proofs we produce now are for our print suppliers.

"We are now seriously looking at remote proofing with Polestar, but that requires a certain level of investment and in the current economic climate, we feel it's not reasonable to push them for that."