It's every printer's worst fear: a lucrative job from a book publisher runs like a dream on the press before being outsourced to a trade finisher - and then things start going badly wrong.

First, the finisher forewarns you they have a bottleneck that weekend, which will delay your job. You decide to stick with the finisher, having fought to agree an affordable rate. Soon after, your delivery man calls to say he's stuck in gridlock on the motorway, causing further delay.

Then, when the work turns up the following Tuesday, the routine inspection reveals the books have been poorly bound. You know this will not be acceptable to the publisher so, disastrously, the print job will have to be run again.

While scenarios such as these are rare, they do happen. It's little wonder, then, there has been a move by printers to bring finishing in-house in recent years. For printers willing and able to diversify, the benefits of taking on the post-press work can far outweigh the obstacles. And with a greater range and variety of finishing kit on the market than ever - some of which incur an investment of just a few hundred pounds - the returns can be a potential goldmine.

In today's extremely overcrowded marketplace, where there could be up to 100 printers to choose from in any one postcode, the ability to offer decent price, quick turnaround times and good quality is essential, says Duplo UK marketing manager Peter Jolly.

"It is so easy for a buyer to go elsewhere if these requirements are not met," he explains. "With in-house finishing you can guarantee quicker turnaround - there's no logistics involved between you and trade finishers. Costs are kept down as you are not paying premiums for outsourced costs, and you can ensure that the finish lives up to the quality that protects your reputation."

Stay in control
Bringing finishing in-house gives the printer control over cost, quality and time, critical factors in today's competitive marketplace. The typical jobbing print start-up of a decade or so ago is a dying breed, says Graphic Arts Equipment joint managing director Tony Hards. "Back then, a start-up could have typically been a secondhand AB Dick and an old guillotine, but little more," he suggests.

"Today the set-up threshold is four-colour capability - digital and/or litho (maybe a two-colour for multipass work) and a guillotine, folding machine, creaser (if digital), collator/bookletmaker and some form of book block binding such as wire, plastic coil or perfect binding."

While printers are expected to offer more to meet the ever-growing demand for short-run, specialist jobs, it doesn't mean they necessarily have to invest huge amounts on equipment - low-cost options are on the up and up. These ‘quick wins' demand no extra labour and return on investment is immediate, says Greg Bird, southern England sales manager for Kolbus UK.

Folding, laminating, scoring, creasing and wiro-binding are the main processes printers are becoming most involved in, claims Bird. "Our Kolbus KM600 entry-level perfect binder, for instance, is attracting interest from printers that are considering bringing soft-cover binding in-house," he adds.

Ashgate Automation, UK distributor for the Fastbind range of Elite perfect binders, CaseMatic casemakers and the new BooXTer Duo binder (see box), has also noticed an upturn in low-cost investments. "People are willing to spend smaller amounts on products that will give them a high ROI," says Lewis Price, Fastbind product manager.

According to Friedheim International managing director Peter Morris, digital printers have been at the forefront of the drive to bring finishing in-house. "There has been less investment in B1 activity. Due to the need for shorter run lengths, a number of B1 printers have turned to digital output."

"The biggest shift has been in the digital print arena," concurs Renz UK sales and marketing manager Daniel Pooley. "Manual book and calendar work are proving the most popular for us, whether produced on benchtop systems or more automated ones."

Lamination is another area that has grown thanks to the digital market. In May, digital equipment supplier Roland DG, through its Training Academy, set up an introductory course for digital printers keen to understand how lamination works. "We are working on new training projects all of the time, trying to satisfy new markets," says Training Academy manager Marc Jenkin.

Learn how to get lamination right and it can become an extremely profitable area of your business, Jenkin claims. "Decent grade laminate film costs around £2 to £3 per square metre, but the finished product sells at around £12 to £15. You can work out the maths yourself," he adds.

Associated business benefits
Many printers report that once they have laminating facilities in-house, they win extra laminating or other finishing work and even orders for their presses as customers seek to have one source for their printed material, claims John Gilmore, managing director of laminator maker Autobond.

"Depending upon the volume of work the ROI can be within two years," Gilmore claims. "However, ROI may not be everyone's priority and one printer we know is happy using his laminator just twice a week because he has total control on those two regular jobs."

Before ROI can be worked out on any piece of finishing kit, printers need to know what is technically possible with the equipment, says Paul Attew, director at collator and bookletmaker manufacturer Watkiss Automation.

"Sometimes the nature of your work changes, so it's worth considering modular equipment that can be upgraded as you grow, or to which additional features can be added," he explains. "Of course, you also need the skills to operate the machinery, although modern finishing equipment is designed to need very little operator skill."

The amount of space available to you is another consideration. However, with smaller footprints a feature of most new models, adding a bindery line, for example, doesn't necessarily have to have a huge impact. It is important, though, to keep an eye on new developments, claims GAE's Hards.

"One of our customers, a B2 print house, had resigned itself to having to purchase a second industrial unit to bring saddle-stitching in-house - it was only when the Horizon StitchLiner was recommended they realised they could manage in their existing premises by adding a mezzanine floor."

While accepting there are clear benefits for any printer that wishes to diversify, Muller Martini managing director Andreas Schillinger cautions that it's not the only approach that printers might want to take. "The other school of thought for printers is to consciously outsource; concentrate on the core business, drive the business through efficiencies and become a cost leader."

That's why Schillinger believes the death of the trade finisher has been exaggerated. "We don't see the trade-finishing disappearing. There will always be opportunities for finishers to fill capacity shortages, which occur naturally when print work moves through the industry," he explains.

So trade finishers may always have a place in the print market. But with speed, money and quality of product so important in these tough times, there is every reason to believe more and more printers will be taking work off them.

CASE STUDY: DL GRAPHICS

Even the smallest investment in finishing kit can go a long way, as London-based DL Graphics will testify.
The digital printer recently bought a BooXTer Duo binder to meet customer demand for creative, short-run, quick turnaround presentation jobs.

The desktop binder, which cost the firm £1,500 from supplier Ashgate Automation, stitches text blocks together so it doesn't need any special glues. "PUR binding cannot cope with photographic paper, but the BooXTer produces a permanent bind so we can put different stocks through it," explains director Trevor Turpin.

"Although it is manually operated there is no set-up time, making it ideal to handle books from one to 100 or more. We have been very pleased with the quality of the books we can produce."

Turpin bought the binder as part of a larger investment package with the Fastbind Casematic hardcover maker, because he believed it was most cost-effective way to produce customised soft- and hard-cover books. "Although there was already interest from our existing customer base, it was very much a question of dipping our toe into the market and seeing what opportunities there were," suggests Turpin. "We looked at other equipment but it was for higher volumes and out of our price range."

DL Graphics says it wouldn't have been able to offer the service without the kit. "We could have outsourced it, but I doubt that we could have completed the jobs in time to meet our customers' deadlines," explains Turpin. "We haven't as yet promoted the equipment widely, but we are optimistic that it will become a profitable side of our business once our customers realise what we can achieve."

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