A 160-year-old Bulgarian printing house works with global brands

"Everything I experienced later had already happened to me in Ruschuk." These words were spoken by the Nobel laureate Elias Canetti, born in the Danube city. Ruse clearly has the potential of an innovator in a number of areas, as the first railway and telephone line, the first factories for alcohol, furniture, paint and soap, the first Bulgarian private bank and insurance company were opened there. And of course – the first modern printing house in our country, founded in 1864. And its successor, "Dunav Press", continues to work to this day.

Even under Ottoman rule, the democratic views of Midhat Pasha, governor of the Danube region, were a prerequisite for the development of Ruschuk. In order to stimulate the cultural and economic development of the region, he assisted in the founding of the first "Vilaetska" printing house. In those years, its director was the famous teacher and publicist Dragan Tsankov. And according to the sources, "15 Bulgarians, 10 Turks, 2 foreigners and 30 prisoners" worked there.

A modern "Kaiser" machine with Turkish, Bulgarian and French letters was delivered from Vienna. However, the vast majority of the more than 160 books and periodicals published before the Liberation were in Bulgarian. Printed literature was diverse – artistic, religious, school, legal. The government newspaper "Tuna" ("Dunav") was also published, as well as the newspaper "Afitab" and the magazines "Istochnik Mneniya", "Slava", "Uchilishte".

During the Russo-Turkish War, part of the building of the printing house together with the machines was destroyed during the shelling of the city. The surviving equipment was used by the first Ruse printers after the Liberation, and some elements were transferred to the State Printing House in Sofia.

Rising from the ashes

After the nationalization in 1948, two enterprises were united in the State Industrial Bindery "Dunav" with the main field of activity being the processing of paper into school and office supplies. The success of the venture is evidenced by the annual turnover of BGN 60 million in 1948 and BGN 91 million in 1949.

Until 1956, the printing house went through a number of transformations to expand and modernize its activities. Branches were established in nearby settlements. For the needs of the newspaper industry, the first linotype machines were purchased, which marked the beginning of typesetting, and newspapers stopped being typeset by hand.

In the period up to 1968, several colour offset machines were delivered and the first orders were made with high-quality six-colour printing on cardboard – the boxes of the then popular chocolates of State Industrial Enterprise "Republika" Svoge – "Mocha", "Peach" and "Apricot" .

Groundbreaking for the new building of the Ruse printing house was made in 1970 and construction took three years. At the time, it had entered into contracts with five textbook publishers and specialized in the production of labels and packaging for the wine and food industries.

At the beginning of the 1990s, an advertising and publishing unit was created, engaged in the development of luxury boxes, posters and calendars.