The FoldLine, designed for newspaper production, and FormerLine, a book block collator for book printing, were unveiled at an open house at Manroland Web’s Augsburg facility at the end of March.

FoldLine can fold up to 300m/min on all common broadsheet and tabloid formats of up to 96-pages as well as cylinder-stitched booklets or inserts. The speed equates to an output of 2,700 32-page broadsheet newspapers an hour, or 9,100 bound brochures.

The FormerLine, which runs at the same optimal speed as FoldLine, is suited for flyers, mailings and booklets as well as glued book signatures. It offers zigzag, wrap, gate and parallel folds.

At the open house, Manroland Web demonstrated the flexibility of the FormerLine by running both book and magazine work consecutively. The machine produced 100 304-page books, comprising 38 8-page signatures, from a pre-printed reel before production was switched, in a matter of minutes, to a 42-page magazine without manual intervention of the folder or cutter, the manufacturer claimed.

Both models can process web widths of 508mm, 762mm and 1060mm and come with an integrated digital splicer/unwinder.

The finishing machines are suited for high volume production in the digital market, hence the target being books and newspapers.

A Manroland Web spokesperson said that high volume was a "problem that digital print had not been able to solve in finishing" until now, but that the speed of the FoldLine and FormerLine outran that of any digital printer on the market yet, making them "futureproof".

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