manroland, a leading global printing systems manufacturer and market leader in newspaper printing systems, has renewed its commitment to the Shaping the Future of the Newspaper project of the World Association of Newspapers.

manroland, which has been a strategic business partner in the project since 1999, has decided to again make a significant four-year investment in the SFN project, which identifies, analyses and publicises all important strategic and operational breakthroughs and opportunities that can benefit newspapers all over the world.

"manroland has long been a core member of the SFN project and its contribution goes far beyond financial support. The company¹s visionary outlook for the future of print, its creativity and constant innovation, are invaluable to the project and to newspapers everywhere,² said the CEO of WAN, Timothy Balding. ³As print newspaper sales continue to grow in dozens of nations across the world, it is essential to keep our focus on original solutions and strategies and manroland is very well placed to help us do that².

Gerd Finkbeiner, the Chairman of manroland, said: ³manroland regards itself as a driving force in the SFN project. The project results help to safeguard the competitiveness of the newspaper in the multimedia world and convincingly demonstrate to the public how important the newspaper is. As a high-performance business partner to the printing industry, we see assisting print media to move forward as one of our main tasks².

manroland AG, based in Germany, is the world"s second largest printing systems manufacturer and the world"s market leader in web offset printing.
It employs a staff of almost 9,000 and has annual sales of EUR 2 billion.
Web and sheetfed offset presses as well as digital printing systems are the major product lines for publishing, commercial, and packaging printing. The field of business ranges from small-format sheetfed presses to production systems for newspaper printing in runs of millions.

The other SFN partners are: Telenor, the leading Norwegian telecommunications, IT and media group; and Atex, the leading supplier of solutions and services for advertising, content management, circulation and online applications.

WAN is a leading provider of industry research and analysis through its SFN project, produces an annual series of strategy reports on the latest breakthroughs and developments in the newspaper industry. The reports are available exclusively to WAN members, who also receive access to the SFN library of case studies and business ideas, and a wealth of other vital information for all those who need to follow press industry trends. More information is available at www.futureofthenewspaper.com.