Installing the two machines beside its existing fleet in September and early October, Corsham Print has significantly upgraded its finishing capabilities, and brought short-run binding in-house.
The DC-618 has gone to work with the company’s Konica Minolta C7090 production press, providing useful options on finishing requirements from its RMGT four-colour and two-colour presses.
“We love the multi-finisher,” said Chris Perry, commercial director at Corsham Print.
He told Printweek: “It’s just so simple. The sheets come off the digital machine, we load them straight onto the multi-finisher, and you can run them in tandem. It’s improved our turnaround time by about 12 hours on the little jobs.”
The DPB-500 DuBinder has proved even more beneficial, as it means the team no longer needs to go out to trade finishers to bind short-run work.
“We’re short-run, small format printers, so a lot of our work is in quite low quantities, though we have litho for the longer runs and leaflet work,” Perry said.
“With the DPB-500 we can now do runs of 20-30 copies cost effectively – we get a lot of short-run publishing, what they call ‘vanity publishing’, and auction catalogues, which generally are in runs of 200-300.”
He said the dwindling number of local trade finishers, expense, and need to travel further afield for binding services had propelled the decision to bring it in-house.
Increased automation in the finishing room will also help the company handle growth, even as the team gets smaller, with eight working at the production hub and three at a retail outlet.
“We’re looking at any areas where we can improve turnaround times and introduce automation. We’ve lost a few staff recently, and it’s difficult to replace them,” Perry explained.
“We can definitely turn out more work now. We can bind books as they come off the digital machine, where before it would take 24 hours relying on external finishers.
“We’re looking forward to continued growth. It’s been a struggle since Covid, as I think most people in this industry have experienced.
“But from Q2 this year, the positivity has been a lot stronger. There’s been a steady growth [in business], as opposed to the ups and downs we were experiencing since Covid – so we’re really looking forward to next year, now we’re in a good, profitable position.”
