Haymarket is more than a quarter of the way to moving its magazine production to a fully digital workflow, and is already seeing many benefits.


To date it has taken 16 titles CTP and expects all its magazines across business-to-business, consumer and contract publishing to be digital by the end of the year.


"Ive seen a definite improvement in quality: registration is far sharper, scans are brighter and were getting a strength of image without running up ink weights," said pre-press manager Meurig Evans.


Weekly magazines are gaining around two hours extra time and the ability to see colour proofs of final pages as a result.


Evans identified communication as the key to making the project a success.


"The magazines that have worked the best are the ones where us, the repro house and the printers work well together. Communication is paramount, as is running test files before going CTP.


"Everyones been very proactive, and theres been far more communication between the printers and the repro houses than we thought," he added.


Suppliers are using a wide range of different workflows to produce the magazines, including a mix of pre-ripped and PDF systems.


"File format has been a supplier decision, we have not forced anyone to buy anything," said Evans. "We just ask for file integrity and flexibility."


Repro houses Icon Reproduction and Camden Town Typesetters are running JumpGate, a pre-ripped workflow, Colour Systems runs Dalim and F1 Colour uses Agfas Apogee. They are supplying printers TPL, ET Heron, Southernprint, Mansons, Garnett Dickinson and Jarrolds, who have a range of different workflows.


Haymarket Business Publications is the publisher of PrintWeek.


Story by Barney Cox