Last year Michael Irving left his position as bindery manager for Wakefield commercial printer Charlesworth Press & Hammonds after 30 years to lay the groundwork for his new undertaking.

Irving said he invested “well over £200,000” on kit for the Leeds operation, taking delivery of a Horizon BQ-470 four-clamp perfect binder and HT-30C three-side trimmer from Intelligent Finishing Systems, alongside an AP360 automatic punching system, a Mobi 500 ring-wire binder and a Punch 500 ES from Renz.

The machines arrived onsite during February and March, and the Purfect Binding Company was officially launched on 1 April.

“It’s taken me a year to get this off the ground and get moving – obviously in that amount of time you lose a few contacts and I’ve spent time getting people to give me a go and get their trust,” Irving said.

“After 30 years in the job, the binding I can provide is pretty exceptional, as you would expect. With the help of the Horizon and Renz equipment, the first seven weeks have been quite busy and I’ve probably produced around 30,000 books on my BQ-470 and about 12,500 on the Mobi 500.

“I have the scope to offer a lot of different jobs, including diaries and manuals as well as Wiro binding in various colours. I hope customers will discover that Purfect Binding is big enough to cope, but still small enough to care.”

Irving is currently working alone, but said he plans to take on his first employees in early 2019 as the business grows. His plan for the time being is to build a “stable foundation” of customer relationships going forward.

He selected Wiro binding and punching as additional markets for the new venture because of their “endless design and substrate possibilities as well as a wide range of sizes, colours and layouts”.

With the Horizon BQ-470, Irving is capable of book binding up to 65mm thick at a maximum speed of 1,350bph using EVA hot-melt glue. The Renz Mobi 500 allows for the ring wire binding of books, calendars and skip-bound jobs sized up to 260 sheets.