Burda Druck and the Indian newspaper publisher Hindustan Times Media Ltd. (HTML) have entered into a joint venture. The contract, which was signed in Munich last Tuesday, involves setting up a gravure printing plant in the Indian capital of New Delhi as an equal rights partnership. Burda Druck will provide both technological expertise and two gravure-rotary presses with a printing width of 2.45 meters that are currently used at the Offenburg printing plant. In the next few months, Indian specialists will receive training in Offenburg.

A new 3.68-meter Cerutti gravure-rotary press will be put into operation in Offenburg in March 2009. Accompanying investments have created so many additional jobs in the last two years that economies of scale achieved with the new machine will not bring about any staff reductions.

The two 2.45-meter two gravure-rotary presses in Offenburg are scheduled to be decommissioned in the first quarter of 2009 and to be recommissioned in New Delhi in the fourth quarter of 2009. Initially, the Indian printing plant will process approximately 50,000 tons of paper a year. The joint venture will be the first publication gravure facility in India. Hubert Burda called the commitment in India an important step in strengthening business operations in a promising growth market.

Burda’s partner, Hindustan Times Media Ltd., is one of India’s leading newspaper publishers and market leader in northern India. The daily Hindustan Times, the group’s flagship publication, was founded by Mahatma Gandhi in 1924. With a daily readership of currently more than 1.2 million people, Hindustan Times is the fastest growing English-language newspaper. Hindustan, the company’s daily paper in the national language Hindi, even reaches about ten million readers a day.