The Redditch-based arm of Adare Group has purchased a bookletmaker from UK manufacturer Wilstead, along with a Dimuken foiling and numbering machine and a bespoke plastic card personalisation machine. 

The bookletmaker was installed last week. Adare SEC managing director Barry Crich highlighted its reliability, quality and output and hailed it as an industry-standard machine.

Crich said: “The bookletmaker and the foiling line are for additional capabilities based on customer demand. The card application is a new solution and it will enable us to bring previously outsourced services in-house. The card solution extends our proposition, our security and essential communications proposition.

“As you would expect, any investment that we make goes through a very structured, rigorous process.”

The plastic card machine was installed in July and the Dimuken was installed in May.

Crich couldn’t reveal how much each individual machine had cost but said the investment had been considered for some time before it was made.

The foiling machine will enable the secure printing of documents such as event tickets or exam certificates to protect against fraud and counterfeiting.

The plastic card machine enables individual cards to be personalised and attached to a 'carrier' in one process.

Adare is currently in the process of installing two new Ricoh VC60000 colour inkjet web presses at its Huddersfield site, which were signed for at Drupa and cost £3.3m. Adare said these purchases will double its high-speed colour inkjet capacity.

“Within the last 12 months, SEC has recruited about 50 new people overall, we’ve really staffed up, ready to man the kit. This is because the business has been so successful,” added Crich.

Adare Group has also had a busy few months in terms of acquisitions. In July, it acquired Polestar Applied Solutions (PAS), which was one of the Polestar businesses that did not go into administration in April.

10 weeks before the PAS purchase, it acquired Banner Managed Communication (BMC) for an undisclosed sum.

Crich said both these businesses are currently going through a period of “bedding in” with the group. 

The Adare Group now employs around 1,100 staff across all its operations, with 525 (plus a further 125 temporary workers) at SEC and the remaining 575 at Adare International.