Nirode Bramdaw, Managing Director of African Sun Media, with his head of colour Ruben Ardendorff, who has been with the company since its inception. (Photo: Arin Barry)
When entrepreneur Nirode Bramdaw moved to Stellenbosch in 2017 to be closer to his family, little did he know that this would be the beginning of a journey that would reinvigorate and revolutionize the academic publishing industry in South Africa.
On the advice of a respected colleague, Bramdaw bought African Sun Media, a well-established printing and publishing company founded in 2003. Like many small publishers in this part of the world, the company was fighting against the tide when it came to challenging international publishers for a piece of the academic publishing market.
Under Bramdaw’s guidance, acquired over many successful years as a senior management consultant, and despite the hurdles presented by 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 publisher, as the two largest publishers by volume, Springer and Routledge, are global companies.
“When I took over, the first thing we did was leverage my trust in the Xerox product range,” says Bramdaw. “African Sun was using inferior products from a competitor and I knew that would hinder our growth.”
This trust was built many years ago through his relationship with Altron Document Solutions, the world’s largest Xerox distributor, and is further built upon by Stuart Daniels, Sales Manager: Production Systems, Altron Document Solutions, Western Cape.
“Anyone can be successful, but sustained success requires partnerships, and that’s probably the biggest credit I can give to Altron and Stuart,” he adds. “They went above and beyond what we needed as a company, even sending special Xerox engineers on site when they knew we had particularly important time periods or deadlines that couldn’t be missed.”
Bramdaw started with Stellenbosch University as his main client and has since expanded African Sun Media’s publishing offering to include the University of Western Cape, Nelson Mandela University and UCT Press.
Nirode Bramdaw, Managing Director of African Sun Media, with his head of colour Ruben Ardendorff, who has been with the company since its inception. (Photo: Arin Barry)
The company mainly produces academic books, the main products of academic institutions required to maintain professorships. At the time of writing, African Sun’s catalogue totaled 475 published books, with 70 to 80 titles in production at any given time.
“Thanks to class-leading machines from Altron Document Solution such as 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 color printer that meets the demanding needs of a variety of industries, including academic book publishing. It features advanced color management technology that ensures accurate and vibrant color reproduction, which is critical for producing the detailed images, charts and graphs often found in scientific publications.
Key technical specifications that lead Altron to recommend this printing system include a print resolution engine with a class-leading resolution of 2,400 x 2,400 dpi, ensuring sharp and clear text and high-quality images. Print speeds of up to 100 pages per minute enable fast production without compromising on quality and support a wide range of media types and sizes, from standard paper to heavyweight paper.
“Academic publishing is a print-on-demand model,” says Bramdaw. “We don’t have a lot of inventory, we have at least five copies of each title in stock at any given time, so we need the right machines to print and bind as new orders come in.”
“This means that reliability and robustness are high on the priority list because, apart from books, you can imagine that official exam papers often come with a deadline that we cannot miss. Downtime is a word we don’t use in this business.”
Altron’s Daniels agrees: “Especially in this industry, our customers have strict deadlines to meet, and if we can’t help them meet them, students won’t be able to take their exams, professors will lose their jobs – or worse.
“This is a high-pressure business and to be successful you need more than just the world’s best printing technology,” says Daniels. “You also need reliability, consistency and first-class service, and that’s exactly what we offer.”
African Sun is currently expanding its presence beyond its core clients to the Eastern Cape and is actively working to establish collaborations with other African academic publishers. Bramdaw believes that African publishers need to do more to help the continent “stand on its own two feet” when it comes to publishing, so that African scientists can publish locally rather than going abroad for “perceived” prestige.
“A major challenge at the moment is the budget cuts in the higher education sector, which affect all universities in South Africa,” he says.
“We are trying to mitigate this by encouraging the research departments of all universities to apply to the Department of Higher Education for separate grants to fund these services, as this is the only way South African – and by extension African – universities can hope to compete on equal terms with their international competitors. I am very confident that Altron Document Solutions will accompany us every step of the way as we face this critical challenge in the years to come.”
