There's a sense of the "larger than life" about Dubai which pervades from the moment you step off the plane at the Emirates hub.

Find time for more than a transit stop - you'll still be awed by the scale of the airport shopping mall, which evokes some of the spirit of the city's souks - and you will soak up much more of a culture where "best" is a temporary benchmark, only to be exceeded.

It's also a city of expats, tasked with making it function in so many amazing ways. One of these - Australian former print site manager Mike Condon - shared experiences with delegates at this year's Single Width Users Group conference in Penrith in March.

He lists a career which saw him move to newspapers from welding aircraft and boats, with a 1979 job helping to run John Fairfax & Sons' 1923 Hoe Crabtree letterpress rotary, newer Goss Headliners - with "more ink going up your nose than got on the paper" - to owning a newsagency, the transition of Kerry Stokes' Canberra Times from letterpress to offset, and a "difficult" greenfield site project at the Courier in Ballarat, a city he still calls home.

And a series of emails in 2009 from someone by the name of Lavkesh Grover - the first couple of which he deleted - asking him to apply for a role as production manager at Gulf News publisher Al Nisr Publishing in Dubai.

What he calls "the opportunity of a lifetime" saw him take over reponsibility for a project to install the first waterless newspaper press outside Europe at a greenfield site in the middle of a desert... while the flagship title engaged in a "no turning back" format switch from broadsheet to Berliner.

Al Nisr's project was itself, one of the biggest and most ambitious challenges in its 37 year history - with an element of outdoing all its rivals - and Condon says the building was a nightmare, with "the wrong electrical distribution boards and then damaged cables delaying the project by a year".

The KBA press and Ferag mailroom however, went in without problems and sat there until building issues were resolved. Equipment includes 12 4/1 Cortina towers with auto plate loading, Baldwin blanket washing, four stacked Megtec dryers, and three 2:5:5 jaw folders each with balloon formers. On the control side, there is QI colour registration on the four heatset towers, and Temptronic water control for ink density. Prepress is Agfa's Arkitex and Apogee, with three Kodak and marks-3zet platesetters for waterless.

Robots take rolls to stripping stations, collect and return waste bins, making stripping stations and 12 reelstands a two-man job instead of the 12 previously.

"The printers took to the new technology very well, understanding the control of ink density with temperature, and without ink keys or water balance - one issue you have to overcome with the Cortina, or run length can be severely compromised.

"There is also no choice of ink or plates, although the same ink can be used for heatset and coldset, but little scope for human error other than the possibility of putting the wrong colour ink in a unit."

The Ferag mailroom was another big change, with CTI winding, polybagging, MSD drum inserting and Rollstream collating, inline stitching and trimming, plus Sitech note applicators, all new to staff.

Typical print orders are currently 110,000-118,000 copies, although pagination is down. Production staff come from India, Pakistan, the Philippines and China... "all willing people who work hard and are open to western management. I just haven't managed to stop them calling me 'sir' yet," he adds.

Three years on, the site "runs like clockwork" and Condon says KBA's "easiest to run" press claim is true, with three printers to six towers. "We still have our issues, but these are normal wear-and-tear issues common to any print site.

"Once the ink hits the paper, it's clean with good copies after 25 copies, and a full changeover of two 96-page products in 12 minutes including wash-up. The presses," he says, "stay spotless all the time."

Peter Coleman

Dubai has quickly become the capital for luxury, shopping and extreme decadence: "People from all over the world are drawn to this little country with its incredible architecture, huge shopping malls, a man-made island - where Kylie Minogue was paid $2 million to sing two songs - and the tallest building on earth, the Burj-Khalifa.

"Even the bus stops have automatic airconditioning, and police drive a fleet including Lamborghinis, Ferraris, Bentleys and a Bugatti Veyron," says Mike Condon.
Dubai is also considered a shoppers' mecca, with fashionistas and luxury-lovers gathering here in January for the magnificent shopping festival.

Dubai's population is estimated at 2.269 million, but with tourists and temporary residents, it is probably ten times that figure during most months. About 80 per cent of residents are expats, for whom benefits include the absence of income tax, cheap beer and petrol at 32 cents a litre.