David Lockie, divisional managing director of Capita document and information services, said that the “significant investment” underlined the BPO giant’s commitment to the sector.
Lockie added that the company was suffering from “capacity issues” at its present sites, which meant that work was being outsourced to various accredited suppliers.
“The Mansfield site will massively increase our capacity, allow us to both migrate existing outsourced work and win more new business as part of our overall strategy,” he said. “Clients will be able to see the end-to-end efficiencies and genuine business benefits to both their inbound and outbound capabilities.”
Central to the new facility will be a pair of twin-engine iPrint Evolution and iPrint Reference presses, with pre- and post-production paper handling from Hunkeler.
Both presses feature a 474mm print width, 1,200x600dpi maximum resolution, 3pl to 13pl drop size and can print one- or two-up simplex or duplex.
The iPrint Evolution has been specified with four printheads per engine, theoretically enabling four-colour duplex printing at up to 254m/min.
This speed will initially be limited to 150m/min by the Hunkeler equipment although Lockie said: “This will be upgraded to Hunkeler UW/RW8 if required to allow the speed to increase to 254m/min.”
The iPrint Reference has been specified with two printheads per engine and will be able to print full-colour in two-up simplex mode at up to 127m/min.
Capita said that it opted for Impika because it offered the best ROI and production efficiencies of any of the alternatives that were put forward.
“This is due to the types of work that we have in our factory where there are requirements for co-mingling jobs, as we have a mixture of short- and long-run jobs,” said Lockie.
“There were other benefits such as the ramp-up and ramp-down speed on the Impika and the quality coming out of the devices. For our requirements, this suggested a better ROI than other devices and also the future roadmap shared with us gave us more confidence we were investing in the right technology.”
Capita has also ordered two CMC JWR 30K paper wrap lines with the ability to cut envelope windows, flap and throat and create variable colour paperwrap.
Both lines will be kitted out with Impika iEngine mono printheads to enable business reply envelopes to be variably printed on the fly.
Other equipment at the 8,450sqm site, which will be ISO 27001, ISO 9001, APACS and IL3 accredited, will include Bell and Howell Criterion Apex mail sorter and Ironsides APT Automated Job Tracking software.
The investment in the Mansfield site follows recent investments in a 1,200sqm warehouse for Capita’s managed print services business and a 16,440sqm facility for its inbound mailing business, including digital mailrooms, storage and scanning.
