The blue-chip Wimbledon-based printer, which has a turnover of £3.2m, is aiming for 10% growth after spending £1m on a pressroom revamp.

This included investment in a fast makeready, five-colour Komori S29 B2 press with coater and the operation’s first venture into digital with a Ricoh ProC751.

Purbrooks said it chose Horizon after facing demand for ever shorter run lengths, but with premium quality remaining essential.

Purbrooks managing director Jan Prokop said: "With print run lengths falling we decided it was time to enhance our offering with digital but we service a sector where our clients demand the highest quality product so we had to be sure the printing and finishing matched these expectations."

Prokop said two booklet production solutions stood out, the Horizon StitchLiner and the Duplo 5000. "It was the StitchLiner’s ability to crease, fold, stitch on a saddle and three-knife trim in one pass that was critical to our choice," he said.

"The fact the StitchLiner can be used easily for both litho and digital work means this investment is across two revenue streams which made it much more viable for us to choose the more flexible option. It gives us the ability to take on much shorter run work with litho and digital produced to an equal quality."

Prokop said he was already very happy with the StitchLiner and that it could make a return on investment within two years, or even 18 months.

"To be honest, to the trained eye, I expected there to be some difference with the finish from the Muller Martini but there isn’t," he said. "In fact, it lines up four-page sets tighter than most stitching lines and allows simultaneous adjustments during a run so slight alterations can be made."

Tweet