Book printers Clays is preparing for the next stage in its digital production print strategy for the UK book market by investing in two HP inkjet web presses.
The company hopes to provide additional scale to its inkjet production capacity with this latest installation. The investment is in response to publishers’ demand for a service that provides digital, book manufacturing, inventory management, pre-retail and distribution.
Paul Hulley, managing director, said, ‘Effectively, Clays has become a logistics business, enabling publishers to get small batches of books into shops, or single copies to consumers, at high speed and minimizing the need to hold large amounts of stock in warehouses. Our aim is to make the overall supply chain more cost effective and efficient, enabling publishers to reduce risk and improve availability.’
The first press to be installed is the HP T260 mono inkjet web press, capable of printing 244 m/min in monochrome and producing 123 m A4 pages per month or 211m 152.4 x 228.6 mm pages per month. The second press is planned for installation in July 2015 and will be the HP T400 mono inkjet web press.
In addition to this, Clays will be purchasing a new sheet-fed colour press from Komori, a casing in line and case maker from Kolbus and a further digital binding line, all for installation across the next three months. Looking further forward, it will be able to extend its offering into full-colour books with the HP T400 colour inkjet web press.
