Bold Printing Group
Bold Printing makes the news
Part of Bonnier Newspapers, the Bold Printing Group is one of Northern Europe’s leading newspaper print suppliers.
Bold Printing has an annual turnover of 1.3 million euros and prints more than 700,000 copies of over 40 newspaper titles.
Established in 1984 1999, The Bold Printing Group consists of three printing plants: DNEX, which based in Kista, just outside Stockholm; Borås Tidning Tryckeri (BTT), based in southwest Sweden; and finally Sydsvenskan Tryck (STAB), which is located in Malmö. Employing a total of 550 staff across all three plants, Bold Printing uses more than 120,000 tons of paper per annum in five presses – one KBA at BTT, one MAN Roland at STAB and three MAN Roland at DNEX.
Bonnier Newspapers, Bold Printing’s parent company, publishes dailies in Sweden and Latvia. The company also operates several related businesses such as Pressens Bild, an image agency, and parts of Scanpix, a picture agency. Bonnier’s Swedish paper operations consists of two big city morning papers Dagens Nyheter and Sydsvenskan, the tabloids Expressen, Kvällsposten and GT, the freesheets Stockholm City, City Malmö/Lund, City Göteborg and the regional papers within Skånemedia (Kristianstadsbladet, Ystads Allehanda and Trelleborgs Allehanda). The company’s foreign operations consist of Diena, the Latvian media group.
Leif Wiklund, Bold Printing’s CEO tells Manufacturing Today Europe more about the leading print suppliers’ operations: “Up until last year Bold Printing was the leading printer of daily newspapers in Sweden – we completely lead the domestic market. Unfortunately, it proved impossible to maintain this position because of very fierce competition; however, we still dominate the market, occupying second position, and have ambitions to return to number one in the near future.”
The Swedish printing sector is particularly volatile and Bold Printing is withstanding fierce competition in an over-capacitated market. Leif says: “The Swedish market suffers from overcapacity and this is forcing prices down to very low levels. We are protected in part by our relationship with Bonnier and the fact that printers must be in close proximity to the marketplace. We are strategically located around Sweden to ensure we are close to where the news happens, in order to remain up-to-the-minute in a time sensitive sector – after all, people need to know today’s news today not tomorrow.”
Leif continues: “If we look back over the last few years, we were – perhaps – not as good as some of our competition in terms of lead-times; we didn’t have stable production and have worked tirelessly on improving this.
Over the past 12 months we have improved considerably, operating what is now a superbly efficient operation. Efficiency is vital in this field, as we look to deliver newspaper print on time, all the time. We have introduced a number of measures to increase productivity, as well as efficiency improvements, in order to reduce plant shutdowns. We have therefore been able to improve the speed and effectiveness of production, which is essential in this time critical industry.”
Flexibility in terms of time is not a luxury Leif and his colleagues can afford: “The most important factor for us is to deliver newspaper print on time, but we won’t compromise on quality or safety. If we are to deliver on time, we have to try and decrease all unplanned shutdowns, work more efficiently and operate a more effective business.”
He adds: “This will continue to be a key issue for the company going forward. The next step for us is to improve efficiency even more, reduce shutdowns, run faster and reduce the shutdown time between production runs. That is what we want to do and that is how a business like ours should operate if it wishes to be a success.”
Trusted and respected, Bold Printing is the name customers can rely upon to provide the best performance, expert care and advice, wherever and whenever it is a needed. Offering a complete range of printing services, Bold Printing always delivers and has gained an unparalleled reputation for reliability. In fact, Bold Printing – a household name in its native Sweden – is renowned for its expertise, worldwide. Customers and suppliers trust Bold Printing so much that the company has been able to establish numerous long-term agreements with many of them.
Looking to the future, Leif concludes: “in the short term, we will continue with our productivity and efficiency improvements, as well as other such measures. Beyond that, further into the future, we have to think seriously about replacing some of our more expensive machinery, such as presses and the like. Indeed, we will soon have to start looking at the bigger picture and forecast perhaps ten years into the future; this will give us clearer direction on what needs to be done and where we are going. We have to start this process today or we will make the wrong decisions in terms of replacement investments – something we can’t afford to do. That is very important for the Bolding Printing Group at this moment.”
Bold Printing Group
Products: Printing daily newspapers
Sites: Three in Sweden
Employees: 550
www.boldprinting.se