Oc and Creative Print Group are launching a digital print service to produce editions of foreign newspapers in London.



Paul Krisson, Oc business development manager, said it would cut the time from publisher to readers in London from 16 to three hours.


Oc will install a DemandStream 8090 digital press in Creative Prints Wembley factory next week. It will be dedicated to newspaper production and can produce 400 papers per hour.


It will roll out copies of the Swiss national newspaper Neue Zuricher Zeitung and the Danish finance daily Borsen from May.


Copies of NZZ would leave the print site by 1am to be on peoples breakfast tables first thing instead of the more usual mid-morning arrival. Paper prices would not change.


Krisson refused to reveal print runs but said the international market was up to 300m newspapers a year, and international sales were 1% of total newspaper sales.


"This is the worlds first short-run online production site for newspapers that will look and feel the same as those from litho presses," he said.


"Others firms have done it, but as a cut-sheet product on 80gsm paper that was stapled. They were news sheets not newspapers."


Oc will limit titles to business and financial press and aim to boost circulation among business travellers, "not the man on the Turkish beach with his tabloid".


The NZZ deal with Oc and Stroma, part of Creative Print, is worth a six-figure sum, said Krisson.


Another site is due to open in May in Copenhagen for Norwegian, Spanish, Russian and Italian titles.


Locations are also planned in Johannesburg, Melbourne, New York and Miami in 2002.


Story by Jez Abbott