Having contributed marketing ideas to earlier conferences, the Singapore Press Holdings team contributed some of the technical detail behind some of its wrappers and special projects to a session at Publish Asia in Kuala Lumpur. Materials vice president, quality control/process Chew Kai Kim got behind some of the creative projects from which SPH has generated millions of dollars of additional revenue (contributing to a six per cent lift in advertising revenue). These included: Translucent paper as a wrapper and medium in premium advertising. “We thought we couldn’t do it, and there are some tricks you need to learn,” he says. The 62 gsm low opacity paper (from CPI) is slightly rougher on one side than the other, so it’s best to print on one side. Use high pigmentation ink, coverage of about 160 per cent, and align content to minimise set-off... oh, and turn the automatic registration off, he told delegates. The outcomes – including campaigns for Volkswagen and Kia Motors – have brought “very substantial” revenue. Wraps on the front cover including both two and four-page specials on Saturdays and weekdays have included 70gsm products for the ‘Straits Times’, and some printed on woodfree paper which brings a bigger loading. Spadias have developed so that they now combine 178 mm, 254 mm spadias and full-page advertisements with outstanding – and award-winning – results. Stick-ons are now applied mechanically on four machines, eliminating the 100,000-copies restriction (and high cost) of hand application. Inhouse management of sticker production has reduced costs by 35 per cent and improved margins... and now we can do a whole run, Chew says. 3D printing requires a change of mindset on the part of printers, Chew says. “You mustn’t try to get the image into register, but just print to the marks,’ he says. SPH has produced supplements with half of the advertisements printed 3D, and with glasses pasted to every copy. Separations take extra time to process (allow half a day) and while Chew can’t say whose software they use, “there aren’t so many companies that do it”. Scented inks are better with encapsulated fragrance using a six to ten micron capsule. “Some break during processing and we try to avoid too many rollers but it’s much better than in the past, when the printers complained and some readers got a rash,” Chew says. Ink cost (at 20 times than of news ink) is half what it was, with marketing, “hopefully going forward”. Fluorescent inks have required modified rheology and a realisation that not all colours will work on newsprint. Results are better on woodfree paper, and cannot be overlaid with other colours.