One of the promises of high-speed continuous feed inkjet presses is that they will change the way we produce newspapers allowing personalization, micro zoning, targeted advertising and very short run publications. So far one has to say this has not happened. To my understanding no newspaper publisher has purchased such an inkjet press for its own newspaper production although it is known that some publishers are assessing the technology. What we have seen is the use of such presses for printing what are termed international newspapers at overseas locations. Many newspaper publishers sell a large number of copies of their newspapers overseas away from their publishing base. The process for this can be by printing at a newspaper plant in a foreign country where there will be sufficient demand for the paper. An example of this is there is quite a demand in Spain for certain UK tabloid newspapers by holidaymakers. It is worthwhile for printing more than 5,000 copies of these papers at Spanish newspaper plants. In other cases where there is a smaller demand a publisher will fly out copies of the paper, however the problem with this is one is reading yesterday's news by the time it gets to the location. The other option for publishers is digitally printing the newspaper at a print service provider with the correct equipment in the foreign country. 

One of the first examples of this was through the creation by Océ of their Digital Newspaper Network (DNN) around ten years ago where newspapers were printed in monochrome only on Océ toner based continuous feed presses. One of the first companies to be a part of the DNN was a UK start up company, Stroma who ten years ago installed an Océ DemandStream 8090 press to print newspapers. Demand took a long time to pick up and Stroma had to move into other markets like industrial and book printing. It did however print a number of international titles including the New York Times and Sydney Morning Herald. Since that time it has expanded its operations in newspapers with links with other providers of newspaper content including Newspaper Direct in 2008, the Newspaper Club in 2010 and recently with Newspapers Abroad that opened up the market for Scandinavian newspapers. Stroma added additional Océ presses to support mainly its non-newspaper customers as well as updating its newspaper printing operations.

Early this year it made a major strategic move for the future by installing an Océ JetStream 1000 colour inkjet press to allow it to support the demands of its customers for colour newspaper printing. This has allowed it to massively increase its capacity for printing a much wider range of newspapers and today it is printing 50 to 60 different newspaper titles every night. Stroma is now probably the largest producers of international digital newspapers in the world and nowhere else will one find such a large number of titles in one organization. Stroma is also using the new JetStream in the daytime for enhancing its offerings in the book and industrial printing area.