Speaking at the BPIF PrintWeek Excellence Awards on Wednesday, Watts said that the initiative may well fall by the wayside if printers did not involve themselves in the project.
"It is difficult to engage with printers on training but the initiative needs your support if it is going to succeed. The aim of the NSA is to provide a bigger resource for printers to train their staff," he told attendees at the conference.
Watt's comments follow ast week's launch of the NSA, which marked the culmination of more than 18 months groundwork by the sectors' employers, trade unions and Proskills, which pledged an additional £100,000 in funding to what is the 11th skills academy to have been set up.
Lord Young, minister at the newly-created Department for Business, Innovation and Skills told firms at the launch that building on their employees' skills was "the best way to help survive the downturn".
Proskills chief executive Terry Watts added that the delivery of the NSA, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Proskills, had come at a crucial time for industries such as print and paper.
The NSA, which will cost around £1.9m a year to run, is projected to be self-sustaining by February 2012, at which time Learning and Skills Council funding totalling £3.3m will cease.
Ultimately the NSA will be financed via a mix of employer contributions, such as membership fees and the sale of products and services.
Proskills also anticipates a significant amount of "in-kind" funding, such as through the provision of Employer Learning Centres by printers that have signed up to share their training facilities with other companies on an open-access basis.
At the time of the NSA's launch, Polestar, Newsprinters, Statex Colour Print and Heidelberg UK were all signed up as Employer Learning Centres.
The NSA is currently recruiting an initial seven regional managers, following the appointment of Graeme Finch as general manager, who will be responsible for delivering products and services to the industry.
Regional managers will work with individual companies to ascertain what skills they require.
The launch of the NSA came as Proskills published research showing that 68% of larger companies in the process and manufacturing sectors are experiencing a skills gap.
