Darmstadt, 14 December 2006 - Dar Al Yaum Press, a printing plant and Ifra member in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, has become the first company in the Middle East and the second company globally - after Hoekstra Boom, a printing plant and Ifra member in the Netherlands - to receive the Ifra ISO Quality Certificate. The certificate is part of an overall project that aims to control and to improve the quality of the input materials, such as plates, paper and ink, as well as the output process. "The Ifra ISO Quality Certificate is part of the Al Yaum strategy and now gives us the opportunity to clearly show our customers that we are heading towards joining the ranks of the world's best printers", says Saad Al-Dossary, production director. The certification covers the process output as well the mechanisms installed to maintain quality over a longer period of time. The prepress area is tested for output resolution, plate register and screen angles. The press area is tested for the color gamut, tonal value increase and register. Details and Information: The Ifra ISO Quality Certificate is an independent tool that certifies the reproduction process for newspapers and is based on the international standard ISO 12647-3. The service has been created to support the demand from newspaper printers and commercial newspaper printers. It proves to their customers that the product, delivered by the printing plant, conforms to the international newspaper quality standard. Every company running the certification programme must perform an initial test. This test focuses on the reproduction processes in the prepress and press areas of a printing plant, and consists of a technical test and an analysis of the quality assurance mechanism. A company can only obtain the Ifra ISO Quality Certificate if the result of the test and the analysis are positive. In order to verify throughout the year whether a company is still producing in accordance with the above standard, it will run another three tests. The results of these tests are compared with the initial test. More information concerning the Ifra ISO Quality Certificate can be downloaded from www.ifra.com (under "Ifra Services - Consulting - Certifications").