The first day of WAN-IFRA’s World Printers Summit ended with a “Panel of Newspaper Production Executives”, with speakers sharing insights about the situation in different parts of Europe and Asia, such as Belgium and the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, and India.

Click here to watch the full recording of the session on YouTube, and here to find the recordings of the remaining WPS sessions.

The panellists included:

Paul Huybrechts
Managing Director, Coldset Printing Partners, Belgium
Snehasis Roy
Director – Technical, Bennett Coleman Co Ltd. (Times of India)
Erik Wallhed
Managing Director, Bold Printing Stockholm, Sweden
Jan Dirk Elstermann
Publisher, NOZ, Germany

Ingi Rafn Olafsson, Director of WAN-IFRA’s World Printers Forum, acted as Moderator of the panel.
Successful businesses, but ongoing consolidation in Belgium and the Netherlands
Paul Huybrecht gave a quick introduction of Belgium media house Mediahuis, the mother company of Coldset Printing Partners. They are active in Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxemburg, Ireland and since the beginning of 2022 also in Germany (with the Medienhaus Aachen):

(Huybrecht showed this slide during his presentation at the virtual World News Media Congress 2021.)

He shared a summary of the last years in his company and the media market situation in Belgium and the Netherlands:

Despite Covid, we had two excellent years.
We saw people really willing to pay for quality content.
We had a remarkabl…