There are 15 wide-format printers in Gorakhpur and seven in the surrounding towns of Basti, Deoria, Padurna, Kushinagar and Maharajgang.

The leader of the pack is Vani CTP Processor & Digital Press housed in a 600 sqft area in Durgabari. Vani is the only printer to have two 10ft solvent machines which have been supplied by R S Signage. One is a Skywalker and the other a Polaris from Gongzeng which has been installed by July end.

Om Prakash Singh, owner of the firm said: "We have invested Rs 50 lakh in 2010 in the wide-format segment. The flex printing market is big. We printed 8.5-lac sqft flex material in 14 months since 2009."

He added: "Election campaigns constitute 20% of our jobs - and the rest of the jobs are from education, telecom, retail and local assignments."

Vani printed a 10,000 sqft campaign for Carbon mobile in October 2009 out of which 1,500 sqft was glow sign (backlit). The campaign was printed in ten days. The company has delivered jobs worth Rs 15-lakh sqft to date.

According to S K Jaiswal, a local dealer for Xerox, Infinity, Sahil Graphics, Galantic and HB Export, "Except for one machine with a Konica head, all the machines are fitted with Xaar heads, which are popular among printers. There are four machines supplied by Infinity."

The wide-format stands at approximately 70-80 lakh sqft per annum with an average print run that ranges from 1,000-2,000 sqft per day per printer.