Al Nisr Publishing, the Dubai-based publisher of ‘Gulf News’ will go waterless in 2010 with a big new KBA Cortina 4/1 line including four dryers. The pioneering company – whose production manager Dean du Toit was a speaker at the Australian Single Width Users Group conference in 2006 – will print coldset, heatset and hybrid products for a market which includes both newspapers and magazines. A highly-automated 14-tower press with 14 reelstands, four hot-air dryers and three folders, will be the first Cortina installation outside Europe and the first four-by-one version. It will be capable of printing 112 full-colour broadsheet pages including 32 heatset pages. Al Nisr managing director Obaid Humaid Al Tayer says the company has set the pace of newspaper innovation in the Gulf for many years: “Gulf News was the first newspaper in the region to introduce a tabloid leisure supplement, a family and a children’s weekly magazine, a separate tabloid classifieds section, comprehensive business and sports sections, heatset sections on glazed paper, automated page make-up and the use of recycled newsprint,” he says. “The innovative Cortina underscores our role as technological pioneers in the Middle East.” The configuration will allow production of a broad spectrum of coldset, heatset and hybrid products without changing ink, “awesome flexibility” he says is only possible with the Cortina. Advanced technology will make it possible to enhance print quality of both the newspaper and the company’s supplements and magazines, while trimming make-ready times, waste and manning levels. KBA executive vice-president for web press sales Christoph Müller says the order is a vote of confidence in KBA’s competence and “an invaluable boost” to the implementation of new ideas for enhancing quality and efficiency through process standardisation. Launched in 1978 as a 3000-circulation tabloid, ‘Gulf News’ went broadsheet in 1980 and now circulates 118,000 copies (Sat-Thur) in Bahrain, Oman, Saudi-Arabia, Qatar and Pakistan (Fri 122,000 copies). An online edition (www.gulfnews.com) was launched in 1996. Magazine titles include ‘Friday’, ‘Wheels’, ‘Sport Xtra’, ‘Property Weekly’ and ‘Entertainment Plus’ (weekly) and ‘4Men’, ‘Aquarius’ and ‘InsideOut’ (monthly). The company manages two English language radio stations, and is a keen sponsor of the arts, music and sport.