Speaking at the PrintCity Alliance conference at the Ifra event in Vienna today, the company announced its partnership with US company First Flavor.

In its home country, First Flavor has launched "taste advertising" technology – what it claimed is the next step on from "scratch and sniff" – where the reader peels and licks a sample that is placed on a magazine or newspaper.

In a US trial, carried out with a grapefruit juice brand in People Magazine, 29% of readers tried the flavour strip and 60% said they intended to purchase it following the tasting.

Sun Chemical's US ink division has announced that it is working with First Flavor and is in the process of bringing the process to Europe.

Dr Bertrand Lousteau, marketing director for Sun Chemical, told PrintWeek: "This is something that the internet cannot offer. Newspapers need to be looking at new ways to appeal to customers, to keep them advertising in print.

"The main reason products fail is because they [customers] don't taste a new product – when we go to the supermarket we always buy the same thing.

"It expands on trying to sell the product in the supermarket, which is expensive and doesn't reach as many people as a newspaper can. There needs to be a push and pull from the publishers and the food industries."