According to the manufacturer, the abundance of personalisation in the US makes it the strongest market for the digital saddle-stitcher Smartbinder, which can be set-up inline with a continuous web digital press as well as being roll or sheet fed.

IBIS managing director John Cracknell said: "The immense volumes of transactional documents and booklets produced in the US, particularly within the insurance sector, are individually personalised and this can only be done through high volume digital.

"Our machines are the number one finishing solution for high-end digital printing, which is why America is our most prevalent market."

The Smartbinder SB-3 Plus, which was first revealed at Drupa, and its predecessor, the original Smartbinder launched in 2004, were both created for digital finishing "right from the beginning", Cracknell claimed.

The Smartbinder range has been designed to enable users to vary the number of pages included in booklets and track individual sheets using bar code recognition to produce different-sized products.

The Smartbinder SB-3 Plus is 30% faster than the original Smartbiner and can produce up to 7,000 booklets per hour, or 14,000bph with the centre-knife option for two-up production. It can also be integrated with IBIS’ Sprint-binder range to offer perfect binding alongside saddle-stitching.

Cracknell said that Graph Expo, held in Chicago last week (7 to 10 October), was not as well attended as previous years but said a number of promising sales leads came from the show.

He added that a "very good" period since May’s Drupa has compensated for the lack of sales before the show, and had ensured that the £3m turnover company was on track to meet its sales target for 2012.

There are 13 machines from the Smartbinder range currently installed in the UK, including Dagenham-based IOS, which recently rebranded under parent company DST Output.

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