Yahya Abdel Azim, Governor of Sohag and Ahmed Sameh, Chairman of Dar Akhbar El Yaum last month inaugurated their first phase of the Printing facility. The venture worth about 4 million pounds is a first of its kind in Upper Egypt.
Addressing the meeting Sameh said: “This unique project is meant for the production of booklets and text books of all types and sizes at the first stage, while the second and third stage will include full production lines for large format printing such as sign and outdoors that will serve the advertising industries in Upper Egypt. It will provide more than 100 jobs. We further plan to establish a fully integrated newspaper production line in the long run.”
Also present was Hosni Zahid, Director General of Dar Akhbar El Yaum Printing Press who said: “Sohag is the first step in our plan. We all know that there is lack of commercial printing presses in south Egypt so we started with text books and notebooks printing capability to study the need of the market and later expand further. The press now houses one web offset two colour machine, an offset B2 sheetfed machine and finishing equipments for cutting and binding to list a few.”
Suleiman Kenaway, Editor of Dar Akhbar El Yaum said the company is planning to have three printing complexes throughout Upper Egypt and Sinai besides the existing complex in Cairo. The new printing facilities enable Al Yaum to launch newspapers in several editions and meet the increasing demand for quality newspapers in the country. The most challenging part here was the lack of funds due to decline in advertising revenue.
Engineer Mahmoud Awad, director of outdoors workshop in Dar Akhbar El Yaum opines that the most important challenge in the printing industry in Egypt is the continuous development within the industry. Every day a new technology appears with which one needs to keep itself updated, to run the business efficiently.
