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ICQC winners from India are felicitated

Six participants from India who won awards at the recent International Colour Quality Club (ICQC) 2022-24 membership competition were recognised at a function

At the event organised by WAN-IFRA India to award the ICQC (International Color Quality Club) membership certificates to the winners from the country, Snehasis C. Roy, director – Technical of Bennett Coleman Co, which publishes The Times of India Group of newspapers, said this year’s winners were specially deserving of the award because of the constraints they faced in the competition.

Delivering the address of welcome, Roy said “Newsprint got us down. ICQC usually chooses the best quality paper for the competition, but this time, price and availability concerns were such a challenge that not even one extra copy was run and this tells the true story of the quality.”

Expressing pride in the fact that no one from India was disqualified in the competition in which there were 45 participants from all over the world, Roy said, “That says a lot about the quality improvement in the Indian scene. We focused on good quality advertisement printing, and that is showing today.” The market [for print] is growing in India and the number of participants grew 20 per cent this year, another positive, he noted.

Explaining that the print quality is judged on two counts in the competition, Roy said there’s a measurable component, in which elements are evaluated by colorimetric devices and scored on technical points. This involves parameters such as colour gamut. Then, there is the general print quality of the newspaper which the jury evaluates visually – this involves factors like set-off, show-through, over-inking etc.

Roy joined K.N. Shanth Kumar, director, The Printers Mysore (publishers of Deccan Herald, Prajavani and several other publications), and member of the board of WAN-IFRA, Mohit Jain, board member and executive director, Bennett Coleman and Co, and board member, WAN-IFRA, Amit Khurana, COO, Newspaper Group, TechNova, India, and Magdoom Mohammad, managing director, WAN-IFRA South Asia, in presenting the membership certificates to the various Indian winners of the competition.

The following is the list of winners from the country: ABP – for its ’s Anand Bazar Patrika and The Telegraph published from Kolkata; Bennett Coleman & Co for the Times of India (printed at Ahmedabad, Baroda, Bengaluru, Chennai, Ghaziabad, Haryana, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, Nagpur, Navi Mumbai, Pune and Thiruvananthapuram); Jagran Prakashan for Dainik Jagaran from Kanpur; Sakal Media for Sakal from  Kohlapur, and Pune; The Mathrubhumi Printing & Publishing Co for the Mathrubhumi from Kozhikode, Kannur, Kochi, Trichur, Palakkad and Thiruvananthapuram; and THG Publishing, publishers of The Hindu, from the printing facilities at Bangalore, Coimbatore, Hyderabad and Thiruvananthapuram.

The ICQC, a global print quality contest for newspapers and magazines, has been held every two years since 1994 to prove and improve the quality of print reproduction while fostering competitiveness and creating a quality-conscious workforce. The publications can be registered as per the production processes applicable, under five different categories.

As the contest is aligned to ISO and WAN-IFRA standards and rules, it helps to familiarise staff with international standards applicable to newspapers, and encourages them to adopt and implement these standards. Those who adopt and print as per the international ISO standards are rewarded.

November 2022

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