May 2008
By Mark Rushton
Innovation as a supplier is not possible until you are able to properly empathize with your customers and truly see the world as they see it. In other words, you have to get into your customer's shoes and face the full-on reality of the every day dilemmas and challenges that they face - only then can you confidently apply yourself to providing a solution to any problems. And papermakers can learn a lot of things from simply spending time 'down at the printers', where they could see what a customer really wants - and needs - out of a sheet of paper.
Printing, like papermaking is an ancient art, and it has been through a massive technological overhaul over the years as it has been dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century. But one problem that printers have always had - and has been there since ink very first went on a page - is drying. And this problem has plagued delivery times and production throughput at printing houses since the days of Gutenberg, the inventor of letterpress printing in the 1600s.
One of the problems in recent years though has been the one of fashion. It is no longer seen as cool to have brochures, books and catalogs printed on glossy paper, on which ink dries much quicker. The fashion now, and has been for a long while, is to favor matt and silk coated sheets, which quite frankly can be a printer's nightmare, especially on short run print jobs which have to be 'backed up' or turned over and printed on the other side.
Bring on Tempo
Sappi decided to tackle this problem head on in an effort to solve this on-going problem for printers, and three and a half years later, Tempo has hit the scene - and by all accounts it is having quite an impact. Math Jennekens, one of Sappi's R&D experts, said: "The inspiration for Tempo came from feedback we received from a lot of printers as part of regular research we do on the problems printers face most commonly. Top of the list were rub resistance, drying time, and problems with anti set off spray (a powder used to stop sheets marking or sticking together after printing). We had to look very closely at what could be done to ease the problems, both looking at inks and paper. The easy way to have solved this problem was to have made the paper more porous, but that would have sacrificed quality, that was not an option."
The company undertook a long term project which was both worked on in laboratories and on pilot machines until a solution was found (patent applied for) and the brand Tempo was born. So now a printer has a sheet of matt or silk paper that basically behaves in the same way on press that gloss paper does, thereby saving him a lot of time and hassle. So what's in it for the papermaker? Marco Eikelenboom, responsible for marketing the new product in Europe, said, "Tempo represents significant added value to the printer. They are already raving about how quickly the sheet is drying and how they are getting so many extra jobs per day or even hour through their presses. We have basically helped them to de-stress an important part of their business. A printer is willing to pay a little bit extra for that type of product, so we have pitched it at around 10 – 12 % higher than the normal matt or silk coated sheet.
"But we are finding that the merchants are really liking it too, because at last they can go out and sell something that is not a commodity, that is not soley and simply dependent on price or delivery time."
So what's next from Sappi's R&D department? "Don't worry, there are plenty of projects we are still working on, but I can't say anything just yet," concluded Jenekens.
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