A Leicester-based trade printer has installed three Horizon systems from Intelligent Finishing Systems (IFS).
Flexpress has purchased a BQ-280 PUR single clamp perfect binder, an HT-30 three-sided trimmer and a CRF 362 creaser-folder. All three systems will help the company enhance its perfect-bound book production, adding PUR gluing capabilities, streamlined production throughput and enhanced folding and creasing respectively.
‘Having just extended the running hours of our HP Indigo 12000 we are targeting more perfect bound books to help fill the increased capacity,’ said managing director Steve Wenlock. ‘We believe that offering a PUR bound book is more appealing to our trade clients than an EVA equivalent. We wanted to be able to offer our clients a book that was bound using the strongest method available which is PUR. So, we swapped out our old Horizon BQ270 EVA binder for the new PUR system.’
‘The HT-30C will enable us to run an end-to-end one person binding operation. Our operator can load the deep pile feeder and unload books at the deep pile stacker. Labour is getting increasingly expensive so rather than stretch the capacity of our guillotine operators it made sense to be able to bind and trim the books at the same time, using the same person. It will also eliminate any guillotine bottlenecks.’
Mr Wenlock explained that the CRF-362 was chosen to compliment an existing Morgana system. ‘We considered another Morgana but felt the Horizon was a better fit this time around. We liked its accuracy, its feeding system, the fact it can also perforate and we’ve always been impressed with the reliability of Horizon equipment and the service we receive from IFS.’
When it comes to return on investment he says the operation’s focus is more on delivering a right-first-time product and the initial impact is positive: ‘We’ve already seen a slight upturn in volume but we expect this to rise to three times our previous volume once our marketing starts to bite.’
