NANTES, France - Goss International Corp.’s Nantes facility is responsible for marketing and supporting some of the company’s most widely used presses, including the Universal 45/50, the Universal 75, the Uniliner 4-by-2 and Uniliner 4-by-1 machines. With Goss again on firmer financial footing - the company said it posted more than $1.1 billion in revenues last year of which more than $300 million came for the sale of newspaper presses - Newspapers & Technology Publisher Mary L. Van Meter sat down with Eric Normand, senior vice president and general manager, Goss Nantes, to discuss the vendor’s recent developments.

On global industry trends you have noticed:

Normand: Goss is watching and planning for many international growth trends, such as the increased demand for 4-by-1 presses in India, increased color demands and the increase in digital technology. The most active markets for Goss Nantes are Italy, Turkey, China, India and Spain. We have seen the growth worldwide of specialty newspapers and flexo press technology has taken a strong hold in the Italian market. In the United Kingdom, the 20-year cycle in press investments has just finished. Norway has a great many printing plants due to the geographic nature of the country but the market is now mature. We have noticed customers with large single-width presslines moving to more compact double-wide presses.

On customer trends you have noticed:

Normand: We see customers now acting as industrial players.  They talk ROI, technical risks, operating costs, maintenance costs like any capital equipment buyer. They no longer buy the top of the range to impress the competition or the market, just what they need at the lowest price. When dealing in their own markets, they build differentiation by reducing costs, improving quality and adding value for their own customers.

 

On market trends Goss sees emerging:

Normand: We see the separation of printing from publishing. Having their own printing facility is no longer perceived as a must by publishers. Printing, as opposed to media and communication, is a production activity, which takes place in an industrial environment. It is noisy, smells of ink, consumer capital and in most countries is very unionized. It is not as easy to predict what the printing business will look like medium-term.  Strategy is now in the hands of the advertising companies since they are financing most of the newspapers.

Technician assembling a Universal press.
Photo: Newspapers & Technology

On how the Nantes plant is accommodating customer and market demands:

Normand: As you know, Goss Nantes is responsible for the production of a number of machines, including the Universal 45/50, the Universal 75, the Uniliner 4-by-2 and the Uniliner S 4-by-1.

We have received a number of orders recently, including ones from Sarnub Industrie Grafiche S.p.A in Italy and the Dazhong News Group in China (see sidebar). We’ll be adding space and capacity to our operations to handle these orders in the coming months. All told, we expect to ship almost 800 units worldwide this year.

On what new technologies Goss plans to roll out in the coming months:

Normand: Goss recently unveiled new enhancements to its Open Press Control System (OPCS). One of those enhancements, named OPCS Maintenance, or MaintVision, links to information servers and tracks press running time and impressions. It also indicates proper maintenance intervals, manages spares and maintains costs controls. Our automatic unit phasing now automatically adjusts circumferential, automatic tower phasing with the folder (compensators) and automatic quarter-fold phasing. Our OPCS remote diagnostics is currently connected to 80 worldwide sites and allows users to remotely update software and obtain diagnostics support.

On how Goss is positioning itself as it vies for customers:

Normand: Today, single-width presses remain the most flexible solution. Variable web width is a given for these products. Most of the presses we deliver these days are 100 percent color and no longer require turner bars or complex web leads. Since the future is unknown, newspapers insist on flexible and upgradeable equipment and try to impose cutoff standardization on their customers. This printing environment is very close to the commercial printing world.

Some customers have equipment in a good mechanical state, often with obsolete press automation or insufficient color capacity. It makes sense to modernize the existing equipment and add more four-high towers to increase color capacity.  If this is done without taking the equipment out of production, it saves building costs and minimizes consequences.