The Kings Norton, Birmingham-based outfit will install the Norpak, its third, next week. It also runs a Sitma polywrap line along with a Setmaster collator.
The polyprocessor was £50,000, with the rest of the spend going on the Morgana, CMS’ fourth Morgana folder in a seven-machine folding department. The investment follows a £170,000 March spend, which included two Xerox production machines, all of which have now been installed.
Managing director Mitesh Chouhan said that his 75-staff company, which he said enjoyed a record month for sales in April, is now one of very few mail houses in the UK with four polywrapping lines.
“The reason we purchased the Norpak is that because of volumes we needed to invest in a fourth to enable us to take more work and meet tighter deadlines for existing work,” he said.
“It’s a very versatile and somewhat easier to use machine versus the competition, and we also have trained ourselves on how to maintain it in-house as well. Operators prefer using the Norpak machines.”
The Norpak, which runs at a maximum speed of 12,000iph, has been configured with a clutched shuttle feeder and six additional rotary feeders, two more than CMS’ other Norpak lines, although they have camera technology that this Norpak doesn’t.
Chouhan said the new folder was “ever-so-fast” and can fold thicker stock than its current Morgana UFO folders.
It’s been a busy year of investment for CMS, its 25th in operation, which also saw it take on a £10m contract for the delivery of a range of print and fulfillment services to Oxford University.
“It’s going well. It’s very big and it’s quite an intricate and complex contract, a lot of the platforms we’ve developed for them are bespoke as well as a lot of the overseas mail routines,” added Chouhan.
“So we’re constantly making adjustments from the feedback we get from the client but it’s going well.”
CMS, which operates from three leased sites with a combined space of more than 2,500sqm, broke the £7m sales barrier for the first time in the financial year just gone and broke the £1m monthly sales barrier in April.
Eight new staff have also joined in the past few weeks, recruited in the bureau, graphic design, client services, production and HR departments.
