"It's never going to 
get any better for publishers printing in Asia than it is right now," says one U.S. print broker. And his words are echoed by many. This is the time to get the best quality and widest range of services, which now include the manufacture of all kinds of hand-labor-intensive book-plus products. Add to this the fact that prices are lower than they've been in a good while, and Asian print services look very good indeed.
Still, getting books printed in Asia requires some special skills. It is not a place for a novice print-buyer to strike a great deal. Since PW began covering the book-printing services of Asia nearly 15 years ago, the dynamics involved have undergone constant change. Originally, it was the Japanese who showed Americans that Asian quality four-color printing could be better and cheaper.
Toppan and Dai Nippon, the two Japanese printing giants, still serve some loyal American art book customers from Japan. But by the 1980s they had to join the trend, developing printing facilities in lower-cost-labor markets, first in Hong Kong and Singapore, then into China, Malaysia, Indonesia and South Korea.
With each expansion, printers struggled not just with new technologies, but with the communications skills needed to print successfully for American publishers. Though English has been the lingua franca of Asia since World War II, the complexities of high-quality printing are daunting to explain in any language. Americans, unlike the British, were unused to working overseas with speakers of English as a second language who were also unfamiliar with international currencies, laws and even their own customs requirements.
So most work first came to Asia from America through print brokers, to whom these realities were not so strange. By the early 1990s the giant (now defunct) Mandarin Offset, a print brokerage belonging to the Reed Publishing Group, with offices in the U.S. and Hong Kong, accounted for 50% of the books shipped from Hong Kong, more than $100 million worth.
Fax machines, embraced by the Americans in the 1980s, helped business develop. E-mail and electronic document delivery in the '90s have made things even easier. Still, many of the printing services Americans contract in Asia come through representatives of those companies in the U.S. or third-party services suppliers both in the U.S. and in Asia. For readers just starting out printing in Asia, we highly recommend one or the other.
The wide range of book-related products, which we call book-plus, have brought another change to printing services in Asia, with skilled hand labor in demand again. Once more, printers turned to cheaper labor pools to remain competitive, this time in China, just over the border from Hong Kong, and in the outer suburbs of urban centers in Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia.
In recent years, publicity about poor working conditions, especially in China, has fueled concern among publishers that their products were being made by slave or prison labor. Today, international American publishers like Disney, Hallmark and DK set the highest labor lifestyle standards in the world, and police their suppliers to make sure those standards are met.
While the range and quality of printing services in Asia evolves along with the American book market, the need for reliable service suppliers grows right along with it. We hope this PW supplement will provide a brief but coherent picture of the current printing scene, and a great deal of information about where to go to get the services they provide.
Number One: Hong Kong
Hong Kong's dominance as the printing center for the world's book publishers was only enhanced when China took over the former British colony in 1997. Last year, book imports from Hong Kong and the neighboring China operations were valued by the U.S. Department of Commerce at over $300 million. And that d sn't even count many of the book-plus products, which don't get categorized as tax-free books if U.S. Customs can define it as a toy or gift item.
Hong Kong printers have transformed themselves swiftly in recent years to meet the demand for book-plus products among American publishers. From huge Random House to little Klutz, publishers of all shapes and sizes find the remarkable versatility of Hong Kong printing technology and a wide range of products and services, combined with the low cost of China's modern and massive hand-assembly operations nearby, just about unbeatable anywhere on the planet.
Singapore's granddaddy pop-up producer, Tien Wah Press, offers an alternative with its massive hand-assembly operations in Malaysia and Indonesia, in addition to excellent conventional four-color work. Two hand-assembly operations in Thailand, SNP-Sirivitana and Starprint, are thriving. But most of the book-plus work comes out of the hybrid of Hong Kong/China dual operations, with high-quality printing and materials sourcing in Hong Kong, and the necessary hand labor performed just over the border in China.
For conventional four-color book printing, though, Singapore is the second-largest export printing source in Asia -- though much of its work g s to Australia and Europe rather than to the U.S. With a few exceptions, Singapore operations lack the local representation in the U.S. that has made Hong Kong so strong. But since the economic crisis in Asia began nearly two years ago, the Singapore dollar has dropped sufficiently to make them newly competitive with Hong Kong (which, together with China, keeps its currency pegged to the U.S.).
Singapore is on its way back as one of the largest suppliers of books to the U.S. (after Hong Kong, the U.K. and Canada); so now Hong Kong printers have lowered prices to rock-bottom to compete.
Asian printers are aggressively seeking more and more overseas business not only due to the increasing demand for their services from abroad but because of the downturn in local demand, as the region's current economic decline lingers on. Consequently, printing for export has become a virtual necessity for many, and, due to the intense competition for accounts, has kept prices down.
Late last year, Dorling Kindersley Ltd moved much of its work to Asia, according to Barry Roberts, group production director in the U.K. The massive DK print orders for multiple-language editions help a number of major book printers in Hong Kong and Singapore keep their presses rolling.
"Historically, DK has always been a co-edition publisher," Roberts explains. This means high-volume four- to six-color printing with changing black plates for different language texts and a variety of delivery destinations.
"We have to ship to our co-edition customers located at over 80 destinations worldwide," he continues. "Hong Kong and Singapore are excellent ports from which to make these complex shipping arrangements.
Singapore's exports of printed books to the U.S. and U.K., their first and second markets, hit record highs in 1998, reaching almost $100 million and $60 million, respectively.(though that is only a third of the total of Hong Kong exports and re-exports from China to the U.S. last year). The Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department reports a value of $300 million, which includes all printed book-type products, including book-plus.
New Equipment
In such a competitive market, printers in Asia know they cannot rest on their laurels. In Hong Kong, Wing King Tong's new 10-color Roland press, the first in Asia, is ideally suited to the multiple-language co-editions that many publishers, not only DK, are looking for.
Except for this one amazing machine, just about everything at WKT is duplicated at their Shenzhen plant, just 20 minutes beyond the Hong Kong border with China. Managing director Alex Yan explains that WKT can print at lower cost in China, when time allows, offering the same quality at both locations.
WKT has a permanent and roving staff of Hong Kong employees leading the operations in China to oversee quality control. And with 400 workers, WKT can do a variety of hand-labor projects, including packaging and assembly, though it stays clear of actual pop-up book production.
C&C Offset also has major production plants on both sides of the Hong Kong border. A staff of 600 is doing hand assembly in China, but C&C has made a particular name for itself in award winning high-end book production. It won the Printing Industries of America 1998 Best of Category (The Benny Award) last year for The New Amsterdam Theatre by Roundtable Press. It was its second Benny and one of hundreds of awards the printer has collected.
Ultra-deluxe books are not the easiest of markets at the moment, but from the production point of view, they are less price-sensitive, because only a few printers can do them. High-end conventional book printing continues to be important in Hong Kong, though much of it has moved to the vast factory facilities of China. Dai Nippon, Paramount and a few others still work exclusively from Hong Kong factories.
C&C's director and general manager Zhuang Xian Qing tells PW that he plans to install Hong Kong's first Scitex Computer-to-Plate (CTP) system this year. The new Scitex will integrate prepress with the CTP system and a new 8-page-up Imagesetter. A new 16-page Heidelberg Harris web press began operations in the Shenzhen plant in January for magazine work. "We are also planning to offer digital proofs," says Zhuang.
Hong Kong has long been known for its beautiful press proof services, offered by prepress houses in multiple copies for publishers' "blads," which are pre-production samples of new titles coming out. These are produced on proofing presses that replicate the actual printing job, using the same paper, processes and inks. But some customers now prefer the digital proofs they get from U.S. printers. Due to their labor-intensiveness, only a handful of U.S. printers still offer press proofs.
Everbest, another international award winner in high-end production, is also upgrading, according to Kenny Chung, managing director of this family-owned firm. He justifies the investment by citing the increasing competition. "Although the Asian financial crisis didn't affect book manufacturing as badly as other businesses in the region," he says, "it heated up the competition, as other non-book printers join in to fight for orders."
At Everbest's new factory in Nansha, China, a sheeter cuts rolls of paper into the most efficient sheet sizes to minimize paper costs. An off-line UV varnishing machine also d s spot UV and a new Mitsubishi 4-color perfector help shorten the turnaround time and improve quality.
Everbest, C&C, Paramount and Dai Nippon all have sales offices in the U.S. (see the listings in this supplement). WKT d s not, and is one of few Asian printers that finds it can work directly with its overseas customers without a U.S. site.
News from Indonesia
Of the many developments in the region this year, the suspension of the 10% sales tax on books in Indonesia is one of the more interesting, leading to a reduction in the costs of books both locally and for export. In Surubaya, Tien Wah has established a major hand-assembly operation, while a local company has set up a new conventional printing facility, geared for export.
Indonesia's giant Asia Pulp & Paper, which has been listed on the New York Stock Exchange since 1994, spent a small fortune in the last two years on its new printing operation in Surubaya. Even during the height of political uncertainty last year, it kept 30 new Heidelberg and Roland presses running with a full binding line.
The paper supply, obviously, is provided by the parent company, which has no less than 11 paper plants in Indonesia, China and India -- a promising operation indeed for export work.
The sales window for these new export printing services is APP Printing in Singapore. Formerly Welpac Printing, the plant was bought last year by APP, and a new factory is being built down the road in the Jurong section of Singapore.
"We want to do the quick turn-around jobs here," says Kok Wengchin, who is sales and marketing director. "The more price-competitive work will go to Indonesia. We are actively looking at an operation in China, too."
The only service not supplied by AAP in Singapore and Indonesia is prepress. But there is plenty of the latest in that ever-changing technology elsewhere in Singapore and Hong Kong. Macintosh and PC page make-up systems are de rigueur here. And the next new direction for prepress will be digital delivery, according to Billy Tse, the new director of Digital Prepress in Hong Kong. Tse has spent is career in prepress services for printers in both Hong Kong and China, mostly for export work.
From the early days of digital scanning by expensive Scitex systems to delivery direct from Mac by ISDN and satellite, prepress in Asia has constantly evolved along with world standards, though many repro shops have merged with printers to provide "one-stop" services.
One new addition to this year's prepress listings is Tang Tak of Power Color Scanning. A former technical trainer for Dai Nippon Screen in Hong Kong, Tang offers ISDN line links and is considering direct-to-plate technology, as are many others.
The Hand-Assembly Specialists
At the opposite end of the printing technology spectrum, demand for hand-assembly work continues to grow with the popularity of novelty and books-plus products internationally. This is one area where there is little or no competition in the industrial West. Every step in assembly that cannot be done by machine, every glue point, every fold, every additional item included in the package, takes exacting attention to detail at the fastest repeatable rate. It is a Westerner's idea of the most grueling kind of tedium, but for many Asians, hand-assembly plants offer welcome employment opportunities beyond subsistence farming.
As with conventional printers, the hand-assembly operations at first printed in Hong Kong, for quality. But as skills improve in China, more equipment is being installed there for proximity to the lower-cost labor market.
Samuel Chung at Excel Printing Company tells PW that 1998 was "our best year yet." Excel has 3000 workers now, with two more factories just started. Next year it plans to move the whole printing operation, now in Hong Kong, out to the China plant.
New Island is also among the top exporters of book-plus products from China and Hong Kong. Overseas business with the U.S. and U.K. now includes more direct work with publishers, according to director of business development John Currie, though New Island has long-standing relationships with packagers, as well.
Starting with pop-up engineers and product pioneers like Waldo Hunt, chairman and CEO of Intervisual Books Inc. in Los Angeles, the novelty book business sprouted its own collection of talent in specialist packagers. White Heat and Blaze Productions in the U.S., van der Meer, Graham Browne and Sadie Fields in the U.K., all competed with Intervisual for creative new products.
At first, publishers bought the final products of these design studios for their particular markets, or they contracted for work based on their own book characters. Now, many publishers have their own creative teams in-house. But one way or another, all these ideas eventually must funnel down to the printers, who take those final designs and turn them into manufacturable products that are cost-effective in runs ranging from the thousands to, sometimes, the millions.
A strong background in packaging printing helps. New Island has often pioneered new developments in book-plus, including acetate printing, hologram foils and now, scratch-'n-sniff books. New Island's 1300 employees in Dongguan, China, continue to assemble product printed both there and at the Yuen Long operation in Hong Kong.
One of the first printers to try to establish standards in book-plus products, New Island meets all the most exacting international manufacturers' requirements both for workers' living and working conditions and product reliability. This has become a necessity for all the major suppliers now.
Among Hong Kong's hand-assembly operations, Hung Hing is the biggest, though only a portion of its business is with book publishers and packagers. A major packaging printer for 48 years, since 1992 Hung Hing has been listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange with a market capitalization equal to all the other publicly listed printers put together. Goldman Sachs owns 15% of the company.
Matthew C.M. Yum is managing director and son of the founder, Yam Cheong Hung, who is still the chairman. Hung Hing also has a paper trading and distribution operation, a paper mill in China producing 200,000 metric tons a year, as well as three printing and assembling plants inside China, with 21 presses and 5000 workers. Another one million square feet is being built now.
"We only started working with book publishers in 1990, with board books for Europe," Yum recalls. "But now we are quite diversified, adding U.S. clients in the last few years."
The China operation sports the largest capacity sheetfed printer in China, two Roland 908 6-color machines with in-line coating, capable of size 6 sheets (40 x 56"). Piquet Graphics, the prepress arm of the company, operates independently.
As it d s every year, PW saw some remarkable products. In the Hung Hing office this year, there was an enchanted castle full of books, puzzles and plastic figures and a teddy bear with six t s, each of which reads a different mini-book when pressed while the child reads the printed version, included in the package.
Book-plus continues to surprise, with new ways to attract young and old to activities that include the magic of reading. And the number of companies offering the combination of quality printing and affordable hand-assembly is growing.
Technoprint is one of the smallest printing and hand assembly operations in our directory this year; its managing director Simon Cheung feels he can function best with a comparatively small staff of 300.
Elegance Printing & Book Binding d s both conventional and hand-assembly work, with seven Heidelberg presses in Hong Kong and another five, and 600 workers, in China. The company works closely with Frank DeLuca, managing director of Pearl East Printing Co. in the U.S., now part of the Elegance Printing Group. Formerly with Mandarin Offset, DeLuca used Elegance as a supplier then and has pushed them to promote their own export services now.
Elegance managing director Ngai Kam Seung tells PW that 80% of its business is books now, and half of that is for direct export, including considerable amounts of hand-assembly work. Soon Elegance will move all its bindery equipment to China, but for high-quality printing and short-notice reprints, it is still easier to stay in Hong Kong, says Seung.
Meeting the Agents
Among other alumnae of the old Mandarin Offset, Leo Chu has returned to the fold, becoming managing director of Asian Pacific Offset. The parent company of Ph nix Offset, rising from the ashes of Mandarin in 1997, Asian Pacific Offset continues to have offices in the U.S. to serve American customers.
George Tai, managing director of Regent Publishing Service Ltd., is, despite his youthful looks, one of the oldest print brokers in continuous operation in Hong Kong. When PW visited his offices in the spring he immediately noted a flaw in the sample book we were holding, a gift from a visit to another printer. "Look at that bottom edge of the binding, the way the blue color is wearing off," he said. "That is because they are inking a white artlin cover material instead of buying the more expensive artlin in the right color."
Tai cites this as one of the reasons publishers need brokers in Asia-to be sure the job is done right. Another reason is that they can source paper and store customers' films in Hong Kong and supply reprints quickly. "Sometimes, if I can't get the paper, I can't get the job," says Tai. And Hong Kong brokers do not limit themselves to Hong Kong and China.
Malcolm J. Lee at Sino Publishing House in Hong Kong is using the extensive APP capacity in Surubaya, Indonesia, described above. Just two years old, his company already has a rep, KMI, in the U.S. "We've just started putting our American customers in there," he tells PW. "But we have had good success with some of our U.K. customers by having our own people on the ground with them in Singapore and Indonesia. And we are working with a second printing operation in Surubaya as well."
Some brokers, like Palace Press, specialize in high-end and unusual projects. But many brokers shy away from complicated book-plus work. "There is so much detail involved in some of these projects," says George Tai, "so much to be worked out, between the publisher's idea and the actual product, that we prefer to let publishers work directly with the supplier in those cases."
Some do get involved, though. Much younger than Tai, Bundy Walker is the second generation of her family to offer print brokering from Hong Kong at Colorcraft. She d s a wide range of book-plus work in addition to conventional printing for loyal publisher customers on five continents.
Another Hong Kong brokerage service, launched a decade ago by two book production pros, James Binnie of the U.K and David Zable in the U.S., is Jade Productions. Jade actually specializes in all manner of hand-labor projects, though it now handles conventional juvenile work as well. Novelties still account for about 70% of its business.
Zable, an early developer of book-plus concepts, runs Blaze Productions in New York. Binnie has retired from South China Printing, which he guided for years, creating one of Hong Kong's best high-quality children's printers in the 1980's. Zable , notes the continuing expansion now into materials other than paper: plastic, molded composites, even wood. "But the concept is always basically selling a book," he says. "The toy or the plush aspect never overshadows the book."
'The Crisis Is Over'
Many more excellent suppliers of the wide range of book-printing services in Asia are listed in the following directory. Keep this on hand throughout the year. But be forewarned. Prices have never been better in Asia, and neither has business. As we enter into the high summer season for export book printing, you can expect those presses to be running now around the clock.
"Personally, I think the crisis is over," Lee Moncho at Colorprint, another brokerage, told PW at BEA in May. "Hong Kong is buzzing like crazy again."
