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The Press Room · 一鸣

A sheet travels
six units. Follow it.

The floor, told in order — prepress and colour science, the six-colour pass, die cutting, hot stamping, folding and finishing, then quality and delivery. Every capability we run, in the sequence a job runs it.

Pantone Hexachrome · X-Rite colour management · ISO 9001 & ISO 14001

01 Prepress & colour

Unit 01 — Cyan

Colour is decided long before a drop of ink.

Every job is built to a measured target, not a screen guess. Files are trapped and imposed, proofs are read under a controlled D50 light, and an X-Rite spectrophotometer takes the colour off the sheet as a number — so the proof, the press and the reorder all agree.

Design-to-sheet: what you approve is what the units are set to hit.

A prepress colour-management station: a D50 viewing booth beside a wide-gamut monitor
Measured under D50
A FirstPack operator reading a printed sheet with a handheld spectrophotometer — X-Rite unit and Pantone swatch book on the colour desk
X-Rite on the sheet

02 The pass

Unit 02 — Magenta

Four colours make a picture. Six make it true.

Two Mitsubishi six-colour presses and one five-colour press run Pantone Hexachrome — the familiar CMYK, plus a dedicated orange and green unit. Those two inks widen the gamut into the places four colours give up: clean skin tones, honest pastels, and brand solids hit on the nose without a special mix.

The result reads richer because more of the visible spectrum is actually on the sheet — not simulated by dots fighting each other.

A six-unit offset press line receding down the hall in warm light

Six units in line · the sheet takes every colour in one pass

  • C Cyan
  • M Magenta
  • Y Yellow
  • K Key
  • O Orange
  • G Green

O & G — the two that widen the gamut

A fanned Hexachrome swatch deck showing CMYKOG chips
The Hexachrome deck — the range on paper

03 Die cutting

Unit 03 — Yellow

The box is the die.

Structure is drawn as a die-line, cut into a steel-rule die board, and struck on a Bobst or Tsair Shuenn flatbed. Every crease, tuck and locking tab is engineered so the flat sheet folds into a form that holds its shape and its contents.

A carton is paper engineering. The cut is where it earns that.

A hand setting steel cutting rule into a die board in the FirstPack die shop
Steel rule, set by hand
The die-cutting machine on the FirstPack factory floor
The die-cutter, on our floor

04 Hot stamping

Unit 04 — Key

Gold, struck under heat.

A brass die is heated, foil is drawn between it and the board, and pressure lays a mirror-bright metallic exactly where the artwork calls for it. No ink sits this proud of the sheet — hot stamping is the line a premium box is judged on.

Gold, silver, holographic and coloured foils; matte or high-gloss.

05 Folding & finishing

Unit 05 — Orange

Folded to a hair, cut dead square.

Four folder-gluing machines fold and seam cartons at speed, laying glue clean and square so a box snaps up true on the packing line. Two Polar guillotines square the stock and trim the finished work to a set edge.

A shingled stream of printed cartons running along a folder-gluer conveyor
Folder-gluer · the carton stream
01

Score & fold

Creases from the die let the board fold without cracking the print.

02

Glue & seam

Side seams laid straight and clean, so the carton erects square on the line.

03

Guillotine

Stock squared and finished work trimmed to a set, repeatable edge.

06 Quality & logistics

Unit 06 — Green

Checked, boxed, and on the road.

Sheets are inspected against the approved standard before anything is packed, under a system certified to ISO 9001 and ISO 14001. Finished work ships from the Johor factory to the Singapore office and out to you — factory-direct, one accountable route.

Shrink-wrapped pallets loaded to a truck at a dispatch bay

Shrink-wrapped pallets · factory-direct to Singapore

01

Inspected

Sheets read against the approved standard — colour, register and finish — before packing.

02

Certified

ISO 9001 for quality management, ISO 14001 for environmental management.

03

Delivered

Singapore office and Johor factory on one route — factory pricing, local service.

Finished printed cartons catching the light on the packing bench
Finished, and catching the light

From our own camera · Masai, Johor

The floor, as shot.

Fourteen frames straight off the floor, in the order a job runs — colour checked and cut, the die shop, laminating and gluing, then loaded out. Nothing staged.

01 · The press

The Mitsubishi six-colour offset press line on the FirstPack factory floor
The six-colour line · end to end
The colour-inspection desk: a viewing lamp over the press console, printed sheets laid out for checking
The judging desk · sheets read under the lamp
A FirstPack operator in the company polo at the press console, the speed display reading 4,000 sheets an hour
On the console · 4,000 sheets an hour
Two FirstPack operators at work — one reading a sheet at the inspection desk, one at the press units
The crew · desk and press

02 · Checked, then cut

A FirstPack operator checking a printed sheet against a Pantone swatch book at the colour desk
Reading colour · sheet against the swatch book
A FirstPack operator guiding a stack of paper on the cutter
On the cutter · guiding the stack

03 · The die shop

A hand setting steel cutting rule into a die board, a close-up in the die shop
Setting the rule · steel into the die board
The die-cutting machine on the FirstPack floor
The die-cutting machine
A finished steel-rule die board laid flat, the cutting lines set out for a carton
The die board · every cut, laid out flat

04 · Laminate, fold, glue

A FirstPack operator at the laminating and window-patching line
Laminating · the window-patching line
The folder-gluer conveyor line running the length of the floor
The folder-gluer · along the line

05 · Glued, packed, loaded

Two FirstPack operators feeding the gluing and stitching machine
Feeding the gluer · two on the line
A forklift loading stacks of finished cartons into a container on a truck
Loaded out · cartons into the container
The maker's plate on the press: Mitsubishi Offset Press, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Tokyo — dated 1986
The maker's plate

Kept right, kept running

The plate on the line reads Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Tokyo — 1986. Presses stay in service this long when they are kept in register and run by people who know them by sound. That is the floor your job goes to.