The group brought in two new colour Xerox Versant 3100s, along with two mono Xerox Nuvera 314s, two mono Xerox Nuvera 144s and a Duplo 600 bookletmaker. Investment figure was not disclosed.
The majority of the kit that has been replaced is older Xerox kit, along with Canon and Riso equipment. All kit was in by the beginning of July, with the 3100s going to Adare’s Redditch operation, one 314 and one 144 going to Nottingham and the remainder going to Huddersfield.
The news comes as the closure of Adare’s Guildford site - the site it inherited when it acquired Banner Managed Communication (BMC) last year - draws nearer. It will be completed by 31 October and all production relocated to the Nottingham site it gained when it acquired Polestar Applied Solutions just 10 weeks after acquiring BMC. After a consolidation period, 35 are due to be made redundant and 14 are due to relocate to Nottingham.
Mark Buckingham, general manager of the Nottingham and Guildford sites, who is overseeing the consolidation, said the investments will support the proposed site move and help “drive efficiencies”.
He said: “What we have done at this stage is look at the cut-sheet fleet that we have at the business and effectively then look at the volume applications we’ve run across all of these sites and thought what we need to do is upgrade where possible, refresh where required and consolidate where required.
“What we’ve also managed to do across the business as part of this is to get uniform rates for our cutsheet output. So uniform rates across mono, colour and for highlight colour, which just means that we are able to move work between sites to run on the same equipment at the same costs.”
The four-colour 3100 prints at maximum speeds of 100ppm at a maximum resolution of 2,400dpi. It takes sheets weighing between 52gsm and 350gsm and sized up to 330x490mm. Xerox said Adare is the first to take more than one of the machines in the UK.
“Within the Redditch site, the 3100 is an upgrade and efficiency to move to replace existing kit,” added Buckingham.
“The main driver for these machines was two-pronged: one was cost reduction over the existing equipment and the second was that the quality output for the applications we need to run through the Redditch site just lent themselves better to the output that we can put through the 3100s.”
The Nuveras, which replace equipment that Buckingham said had “run its course”, print at 314ipm and 144ipm respectively on a variety of different substrates.
Adare SEC is now a standalone entity, having been separated from Adare International when the Adare Group was dissolved on 31 July. Headed up by newly appointed chief executive Richard Slee, the 600-staff operation is targeted for £75m sales by the end of the year.
