KNUST installs GH¢6m print facility

The Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) has inaugurated a multi-purpose printing house and refurbished a 50-year-old printing facility.

The facility has placed the university in the lead in printing in the northern sector of the country.

Named the ‘University Printing Press Kumasi (UPK)’, the facility has a modern equipment comparable to the best in the world, including a 746-colour unit for production, and for post-press purposes, a folding machine, a programmable digital guillotine, a Eurobind 600 perfect binder, a UV vanisher and a laminating machine.

The facility also has six key print-production machines as well as a 250KVA standby generator to power the equipment during power outage.

The Chairman of the University Council, Mr Kwame Saarah-Mensah, and the Vice Chancellor, Prof. William Otoo-Ellis, jointly inaugurated the GH¢6 million facility funded from the UPK’s internally generated funds.

One-stop press

The new machines are to augment the existing ones to strategically take care of the three major areas of print production—pre-press, production and post press—to make UPK a one-stop press, and not only one of the best press in the Ashanti Region, but also a major security printing outfit in the northern sector of Ghana.

The Manager of the print house, Mr Michael Afrifa Darko, said UPK was the first printing press in Ghana to generate and produce MCQ scannable forms for KNUST for the past seven years and had now extended the supply of customised scannable forms to the University of Ghana, Legon, the University for Development Studies and the University of Education, Winneba.

 Some of the equipment in the new KNUST printing house 

He said the UPK would also focus on book publishing to assist authors, the general public, especially lecturers who engaged in self-publishing to upgrade and package their lecture notes into proper books in accordance with the internationally accepted standard.

The completion of the building is in line with a strategic plan to rebrand, purchase new equipment, motivate staff and expand the facility.

The UPK is also to collaborate with the government to produce and print textbooks as a way of empowering the local industry.

Vice Chancellor

Prof. Otoo-Ellis urged management of the facility to develop appropriate strategies to continue to remain competitive and in business.

Beyond that, he said, there was the need to offer comprehensive service to clients and appropriate human relations to keep them.

Mr Saarah-Mensah urged staff to own the business and not to treat it as government job, where commitment was low.

He said bad attitudes such as pilfering and corruption had led to the collapse of many of the state institutions and so there was the need for attitudinal change if the UPK was to survive in the industry.