The scale of India's newspaper printing industry
India is the world's largest newspaper market by circulation — not by revenue, but by number of copies printed daily. The Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) India reports combined daily circulation of the top 10 newspapers alone exceeds 35 million copies. When all languages and regional editions are included, India prints well over 100 million newspaper copies daily (2024 estimate). This enormous volume is produced by a relatively small number of large web offset printing plants, with newer high-speed digital presses beginning to appear for short-run regional editions.
Coldset web offset — the newspaper printing process
Coldset (also: cold web, news web) offset printing is the standard process for newspaper and free-sheet printing. The fundamental difference from heatset web or sheetfed offset is the drying mechanism: coldset inks dry by absorption into uncoated, porous paper (newsprint) — not by heat. There is no dryer section on a coldset press.
How a coldset web press works
A coldset web press is a reel-to-reel press — paper feeds from a large reel at one end and exits as a folded newspaper at the other, at speeds of 40,000–70,000+ copies per hour on modern presses. The process: the paper web (typically 600–900mm wide) unwinds from the reel stand, passes through printing units that apply CMYK inks in successive nips (each nip = one blanket cylinder pressing against the paper), then passes through a former that folds the web into pages, then through a cutter that separates individual copies, and finally through a stacker or conveyor to bundling.
Coldset ink properties
Coldset inks are highly fluid, low-viscosity formulations specifically designed to be absorbed rapidly by newsprint. They do not contain photointiators (no UV curing) and do not have the oil vehicles that evaporate in heatset drying. Coldset inks typically: have a tack of 2–4 (versus 8–12 for sheetfed inks), dry entirely by absorption, and are prone to rub-off (ink transfer to hands) because some ink remains on the surface rather than being fully absorbed. This rub-off is why fresh newspapers mark hands — it is an inherent property of coldset printing, not a print quality defect.
Newsprint — the substrate
Newsprint is manufactured specifically for coldset web offset. Key properties: low basis weight (40–52 gsm — the lightest papers used in commercial printing), high porosity for rapid ink absorption, low brightness (typically 55–60% ISO), and high opacity relative to the low weight. Indian newsprint is produced primarily by TNPL (Tamil Nadu Newsprint and Papers), Emami Paper Mills, and is also imported from Scandinavia, Canada, and South Korea.
The Indian newsprint market has faced significant contraction since 2020 as print newspaper circulations decline. TNPL and other Indian newsprint mills have progressively pivoted to packaging board production as newsprint demand has fallen. By 2026, India imports a larger proportion of newsprint than a decade ago, with domestic mills focusing on value-added grades.
Colour newspaper printing — the registration challenge
Printing colour on a high-speed web press running 70,000+ copies per hour at paper speeds of 10–15 metres per second requires precise registration control that is technically more demanding than sheetfed offset. The paper stretches slightly from reel unwind to delivery, humidity in the press hall causes paper expansion or contraction, and the paper is moving continuously rather than being positioned sheet-by-sheet.
Modern newspaper presses (Goss Sunday 3000, MAN Roland Geoman, KBA Commander) use automatic register control systems — sensors measure the printed image and automatically adjust the lateral and longitudinal register of each printing unit in real time. Even with automatic control, newspaper colour registration is specified to ±0.3–0.5mm tolerance, compared to ±0.1mm for high-quality sheetfed offset. This is why newspaper colour photos have slightly soft edges at normal reading distance — the registration tolerance is visible at close inspection.
Newspaper press manufacturers — what runs India's papers
India's major newspaper printing plants operate presses from: Goss International (US — the Goss Sunday and Goss Magnum are the most common in India), MAN Roland (Germany — Geoman series), and KBA (Germany — Commander series). Older Crabtree and Goss Community presses remain in service at regional publishers. All major newspapers have invested in automated plate-making (CTP — computer to plate) that replaced film-based plate production in most large plants by 2010.
Digital printing for regional editions — the emerging shift
The economics of small regional edition newspaper printing (under 5,000 copies) are being disrupted by digital inkjet web presses. A coldset web offset press requires a minimum viable run of approximately 5,000–8,000 copies to justify the makeready and waste — below this quantity, per-copy cost is prohibitive. High-speed inkjet web presses (Screen Truepress, Kodak Prosper, Ricoh InfoPrint) can produce newspaper-format products at 1,000+ copies efficiently with no plate cost and shorter makeready. Several Indian regional publishers have adopted this approach for hyperlocal editions.