Kasturi & Sons director Kasturi Balaji has been named to chair WAN-Ifra's new World Printers Forum.

The author of last year's comprehensive report on newsprint handling, he joins 11 other global members in the new group which aims to encourage innovation and the continued development of printed news media. Chennai-based Kasturi & Sons is the publisher of The Hindu.

He says the group will focus sharply on how printed products - largely newspapers from news media organisations and companies - can be kept relevant and be sustained into the distant future: "The Forum seeks to achieve this by addressing all print-related questions and encouraging innovation, product development and productivity."

Though much news media innovation today is directed at digital developments, printed newspapers continue to attract 2.5 billion daily readers and produce more than 93 per cent of newspaper company revenues globally.

Rick Stunt, group paper director of the UK's Daily Mail Group Media has been elected vice-chairman. Members of the board - half of which represent publishing and printing companies and half materials and equipment suppliers - are:

- Dieter Betzmeier (member of the executive board of manroland Web Systems, Augsburg, Germany);

- Dr. Michael Hirthammer (general manager, director global paste technologies, screen and industrial, Sun Chemical, Karlstein am Main, Germany);

- Thomas Isaksen (chief executive of DDPFF - Den Danske Presses, Faellesindkøbs-Forening, København, Denmark);

- Herbert Kaiser (project manager and senior project manager engineering newspaper presses at Koenig & Bauer, Würzburg, Germany);

- Jan Kasten (managing director and chief technology officer of ppi Media, Hamburg, Germany);

- Graham Macfarlane (board member of Felix Böttcher, Cologne, Germany);

- Mohamed Hassan Mohamed Ali (senior general manager, technical services at Star Publications and member of Asian Newspaper Printers, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia);

- Winfried Schaur (senior vice president, newspaper publishing at UPM, Augsburg, Germany);

- Josef Schiessl (technical director, Süddeutscher Verlag Zeitungsdruck, Munich, Germany); and

- Peder Schumacher (president V-TAB, chairman Nordic Offset Printers Association, Gothenburg, Sweden).