Dennis Publishing’s ‘The Week’ changes to Stora Enso’s PrimaPress uncoated lightweight paper

Print Solutions

Earlier this year Stephen Catherall, head of production for Dennis Publishing instigated a review of papers used for its publications.

Part of this review resulted in ‘The Week’, Dennis Publishing’s flag ship current affairs magazine, changing to Stora Enso’s PrimaPress paper for its heatset web offset production. Dennis had been an early adopter of this paper, using it on a number of other titles.

This uncoated lightweight paper has the properties of a lightweight coated paper due to an innovative supercalendering process. This results in high whiteness, good opacity and a brilliant print gloss.

Produced at Stora Enso Kvarnsveden Mill in Sweden, it has FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody certifications.

After running print trials to assess the look and feel of ‘The Week’ on PrimaPress, Dennis Publishing went live with this paper. At this stage Stora Enso’s technical customer support manager, Charlie Pett, together with Antalis’s Matthew Valentine and Paul Sherfield from the Missing Horse Consultancy stepped in to assist Dennis with the changes needed to their pre-press workflows.

As Charlie Pett stated, ‘Although PrimaPress is an excellent alternative for lightweight coated papers, in order to get the best printed results and press performance from this paper, we developed a special PrimaPress ICC CMYK profile.’

This profile is based on the PSO Standard LWC profile, based on the Fogra 46 colour dataset. It has been amended to reduce the TAC (total area coverage) and uses a high amount of GCR (Grey Component Replacement) that gives in better press colour stability, and can result in significance ink saving over conventional profiles.

The Stora Enso technical customer support team worked with Dennis on implementing this profile within ‘The Week’ editorial and advertising pre-press workflows.

Dennis’s senior creative repro manager Dave Kinnard said the help from t Stora Enso made the change to the PrimaPress and the PrimaPress ICC profile very easy. The designers found the change seamless, as the profile was implemented as a colour settings file in their Adobe CC software. The advertisements are re-profiled within Dennis’s Papermule AdDesk solution so ensuring the PrimaPress profile is used for both advertisements and editorial.

Matthew Valentine from Antalis is of the view that the support offered by Stora Enso in this area has been superb.

Martin Gercke, Stora Enso’s vice president of technical customer services, stated: ‘This project demonstrates Stora Enso’s commitment to proactive customer support in this area, rather then just serving as a trouble shooting operation for paper.’

Stephen Catherall was very pleased, both with the level of support from the Stora Enso team and the printed result. He stated, ‘The printed result is very good. The printer was briefed on the technical requirements of the paper and profile, so this change to PrimaPress using an ICC profile to obtain the best colour on the paper has resulted in a very stable printed product. We are now using the new PrimaPress ICC profile for the other titles that print on this paper.’