The Altrincham-based company, which diversified into digital print in 2009, has brought all of its finishing in-house to enable it to keep up with competitors, and in recent years has also invested in a Horizon booklet maker, Polar guillotine, a Stahl folder, a Soag four-head drill and a DK laminator. It now has three Heidelberg offset presses and one Xerox 700 digital press.
Olympic Press director Jim Gray, said: "Outsourcing finishing is not a viable option for us these days. The high transport costs and minimum charges make it too expensive – especially as run lengths have been coming down.
The company invested in the £6,000 Duplo DC-445 after realising staff were spending too much time creasing by hand. It trialled another creaser next to the Duplo DC-445 but chose the latter as staff preferred its feeding operation on laminated stock.
Gray said: "The guys in the factory found it to be the most productive because the feeding was more consistent and less prone to misfeeds. We also noticed it didn’t mark the print, which was a major advantage."
The DC-445 creaser is an auto-feeding creasing machine with optional slitting and perforating units. It is designed to cope with short runs with fast set-up and multiple creasing – up to 15 per sheet in 0.1mm increments.
