Sopecam set for new press commissioning

From all parts of the country, leaders of the Press and Publishing Company of Cameroon (Sopecam) are in Yaoundé. They are participating in a seminar entitled "Printing Sopecam: the technical facilities and sales arguments", since Tuesday at the company's headquarters.

The seminar was organized by the General Manager, Marie-Claire Nnana aiming to provide agency heads with all the production equipment available to the publisher of Cameroon Tribune. Notably the older machines, those rehabilitated, and especially the new KBA-Comet, new jewel acquired by Sopecam yet to be commissioned.

According to Jean-Baptiste Koué, Technical Director of Sopecam, the KBA Comet press is a technological feat which will aid in the great technological and qualitative leap that the company is about to make.

Sopecam will become the first French-speaking black African country to own this rotary which has a production speed of 35 to 70,000 newspaper copies per hour. It has been designed as a first step, to print Cameroon Tribune and then follow with the production of magazines and books.

During startup, the benefits will be many including a better quality of the newspaper, greater flexibility in its pages. "The current machine has a maximum capacity of 32 pages. With the KBA, we can do 32 color pages, 48 pages with 16 colors and 32 black and white pages. There will be fewer mappings" says the director.

The commercial component will also be revolutionized. "With this new press, we can print all pages in color. So it will be possible to get advertising on all pages of the newspaper which is not currently the case as we have only six pages available for it," he explains.

The technical director is well aware that Sopecam is deep in the preparations for the installation of the new press and commissioning will take place in four weeks, unless last-minute changes.