IPG visits United Nations Publishing Section a year after it was flooded by Superstorm Sandy

By Bob Neubauer

Last month, IPG Editor Bob Neubauer paid a visit to the United Nations’ Publishing Section in New York City. A year ago this in-plant had nearly 100 employees running numerous offset presses and digital printers in a basement facility on Manhattan’s east side. Then Superstorm Sandy hit the East Coast in October 2012 and sent the Hudson River surging right through the in-plant’s doors. All of its equipment was destroyed.

In the year since that disaster, the UN Publishing Section reopened as a digital printing operation in a temporary conference facility at the UN site. The offset operation was not brought back. Many former press operators have been reassigned to other tasks, such as scanning old UN documents for digital archival.

Publishing Section Chief Narendra Nandoe told IPG that he had already been planning to phase out offset over the next five to seven years, but Sandy accelerated those plans. Today, long-run publications that the in-plant had been printing for UN agencies are being outsourced, while “mandated” documents, such as the daily UN Journal, are being printed (in the six official languages of the UN) on a pair of Canon Océ Varioprint 6320s with in-line binding. Color pages are printed on a Canon imagePRESS C6010.

Nandoe is keeping a close watch on production inkjet technologies and predicts the in-plant will eventually add new printing equipment to bring back many of the publications being outsourced. He’s a strong proponent of in-house printing, for reasons of time and cost savings, as well as security.

In the near term, though, impending budget cuts at the UN threaten to downsize his already decimated operation. Because certain mandated documents must be printed on-site, however, the in-plant will continue to operate.

Overseeing the United Nations’ Publishing Section are Ramon del Rosario, deputy chief (left), and Narendra Nandoe, chief.

An operator in the United Nations’ relocated and downsized in-plant runs one of the Publishing Section’s two Canon Océ Varioprint 6320s.

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Bob Neubauer Author's page

Bob has served as editor of In-plant Impressions since October of 1994. Prior to that he served for three years as managing editor of Printing Impressions, a commercial printing publication. Mr. Neubauer is very active in the U.S. in-plant industry. He attends all the major in-plant conferences and has visited more than 170 in-plant operations around the world. He has given presentations to numerous in-plant groups in the U.S., Canada and Australia, including the Association of College and University Printers and the In-plant Printing and Mailing Association. He also coordinates the annual In-Print contest, co-sponsored by IPMA and In-plant Impressions.

United Nations In-plant, A Year After the Flood