Ingram Content Group announced plans to open a networked Lightning Source print-on-demand book production facility in Australia. The new Australian POD facility will manufacture both paperback and hardcover black and white interior books and should begin operation in June 2011.
The new full-scale POD Australian plant gives Ingram strategic placement in the Asia-Pacific book market and offers the region’s publishers the ability to reduce dependence on warehousing while expanding distribution. Australian publishers will also be able to generate additional sales through Ingram’s U.S. and U.K. Lightning source retail channels.
Ingram will now have five networked POD manufacturing plants including facilities in La Vergne, Tenn., Allentown, Penn., Milton Keynes in the UK and Maurepas, France, a joint-venture with Hachette Book Group. Lightning Source’s digital library offers more than 4.4 million titles for POD delivery.
Ingram Content Group CEO David Prichard said “this expansion of Ingram’s global presence, from the U.K. to France and now Australia, provides publishers with expanded market reach and sales opportunities, as well as makes thousands of books available quickly and affordably to booksellers and their customers.”
