When entrepreneur Nirode Bramdaw moved to Stellenbosch in 2017 to be closer to his family, little did he know it would be the start of a journey that would revitalise and revolutionise the academic publishing industry in South Africa.
Acting on advice from a reputable colleague, Bramdaw purchased African Sun Media, a well-established print and publishing company that was started in 2003. Like many small publishers in this part of the world, the company had found itself swimming against the stream when it came to challenging global publishers for a slice of the academic publishing market.
With Bramdaw’s guidance, gained over many successful years as a high-level business consultant, and despite the roadblock that was the COVID-19 pandemic, African Sun Media has grown to become South Africa’s third-largest academic publisher. It is also the leading South African-based publisher, since the top two publishers by volume, Springer and Routledge, are global businesses.
“One of the first things we did when I took over was leverage my trust of the Xerox product range,” says Bramdaw. “African Sun was using a competitor’s inferior products, and I knew this was going to be a handicap for us if we wanted to grow.”
This trust was formed many years ago through his relationship with Altron Document Solutions, the world’s largest Xerox distributor, and it continues to expand with Stuart Daniels, Sales Manager: Production Systems, Altron Document Solutions, Western Cape.
“Anyone can be successful, but lasting success takes partnerships, and that’s probably the biggest credit I can give to Altron and Stuart,” he adds. “They have gone over and above what we needed as a business, even posting dedicated Xerox technicians onsite when they know we have particularly important periods or deadlines that can’t be missed.”
Having started with the University of Stellenbosch as its tentpole client, Bramdaw has since expanded African Sun Media’s publishing outputs to include the University of Western Cape, Nelson Mandela University and UCT Press.
The company mainly produces scholarly books, the primary output of academic institutions required to maintain professorships. At the time of writing, African Sun’s catalogue totalled 475 published books, with 70 to 80 titles in production at any given time.
“Thanks to class-leading machines from Altron Document Solution like the Xerox Versant 3100 Production Press, we now have the very best printing and binding solutions on the market.”
The Xerox Versant 3100 Production Press is a high-performance, professional-grade colour printer designed to meet the rigorous demands of various industries, including academic book publishing. It features advanced colour management technology, ensuring accurate and vibrant colour reproduction crucial for producing detailed images, charts and graphics commonly found in academic publications.
The key technical specifications that lead Altron to recommend this press include a print resolution engine capable of class-leading 2 400 x 2 400 dpi output, which guarantees sharp and clear text as well as high-quality images. Print speeds of up to 100 pages per minute allow for rapid production without compromising quality, while supporting a wide range of media types and sizes, from standard paper to heavyweight stock.
“Academic publishing works on a print-on-demand model,” says Bramdaw. “We don’t keep a lot of stock, with a minimum of five copies of each title in stock at any point, so we need the right machines to print and bind as soon as new orders come in.
“This means reliability and robustness are top of the priority list, because aside from books, you can imagine that official exam papers often come with a deadline, which we aren’t allowed to miss. Downtime is not a word we use in this business.”
Altron’s Daniels concurs: “In this industry in particular, our clients work to strict deadlines, and if we can’t help them achieve those,” students can’t sit their exams and professors lose their tenures, or worse.
“It’s a high-pressure business and takes more than just the world’s best printing technology to make it work,” says Daniels. “It also takes reliability, consistency and world-class service, and that’s what we provide.”
African Sun is currently expanding its footprint beyond its core clients to the Eastern Cape and is actively working on establishing collaborations with other African scholarly publishers. Bramdaw believes African publishers need to make a better case for the continent to “stand on its own feet” when it comes to publishing, so that African scholars can publish locally instead of going overseas for ‘perceived’ prestige.
“A major challenge right now is the cutting of budgets in the higher education sector, which affects all the universities around South Africa,” he says.
“We try to mitigate that by encouraging research offices at all universities to put applications into the Department of Higher Education for separate grants to fund this output, because it’s the only way South African – and by extension, African – universities can hope to compete on an even footing with their global counterparts. I’m very confident that Altron Document Solutions will be with us step by step as we face up to this defining challenge in the coming years.”
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