The two firms will launch Flowman's eponymous product, which aims to fully automate file delivery from publisher to printer, later in the year following the recruitment of a country manager for the UK.

Flowman acts as a hub for file transfers between newspaper publishers and contract or group printers through an online interface.
The publisher sends completed pages to a central server which holds a bespoke database of print requirements for each title and rips the file before returning a soft proof to the sender for approval.

It then assembles the correct impositions for the title and delivers the imposed file straight into the pre-press queue at the print plant.

The system updates the pre-press manager automatically by email or SMS on the progress of the job as it arrives in the workflow and again when it is delivered to the print queue.

Flowman managing director Petri Karjalainen said that the workflow was aimed both at contract newspaper printers running one or two sites and larger press groups with multiple print sites.

Although Flowman is aimed at the newspaper sector, Karjalainen added that trials of the product were currently underway in Finland with more demanding heatset magazine printers.

Matti Mikkola, development manager at existing client Sanoma Print, a major Finnish newspaper publisher which installed the workflow in 2002, said that Flowman had cut bitmap delivery costs to just 11% of previous levels and virtually eliminated delivery of faulty files.

The UK server for the Flowman will be housed at Vio's Islington premises, but larger publishers will be able to opt for a server to be installed in-house.

By Josh Brooks