The kit, with a list price of around £65,000, was installed by Horizon agent IFS in March and was configured with two VAC-Turbo 600 collating towers. It will predominantly be binding work 'nearline' from the firm's two HP Indigo 7600 digital presses.

Sales and marketing director Christian Peacock said G&H Group would continue to roll out litho work, but the future "very much lies in a fast turnaround, responsive and high quality digital service" for customers including retailers, finance houses, educational establishments and business-to-business collateral.

"Where our previous older bindery systems would have taken up to 25 minutes per job to set up, the new Horizon takes just a couple of minutes," he said. "We can save up to a third or even half the time now. We are more efficient and more effective and can provide an improved service."

Peacock said the 4,500bph JDF-ready SPF/FC-200A was chosen for three reasons: build quality, the functionality and flexibility provided by a single system, and while he said it was not the cheapest, it was "good for what it does and what we can now do".

The system features a 200-programme job memory for instant recall and an icon-based touch-screen for job set-up, he said. An advanced suction rotor drum feeding system, meanwhile, operated on a wide variety of paper stocks at high speeds. IFS supplied the Horizon.

"Accuracy and reliability are assured by misfeed, double-feed and jamming sensors on each bin and the feed error history can be monitored via the touchscreen. The collators are faster and replace an older collator more suited to litho work. They are also more highly automated, which improves production."