The nearline product will be available to the market in September this year and is based on industry standard JDF. Prices for the new booklet maker have not been confirmed and there are currently no plans to extend the product to run inline with the HP Indigo 5000.

"Right now that is not our focus. Working with the HP Indigo presses, the PDC Finisher incorporates a closed-loop workflow to create an effective and efficient nearline finishing process," said Duplo Corporation vice president of global marketing Dominic Quennell.

The PDC Finisher can finish any size run of booklets automatically and includes those with variable sheet counts from booklet to booklet. It can detect the presence of individual sheets while finishing and automatically shuts down if a single sheet is missing or orientated incorrectly.

"Automating the finishing process based on the emerging JDF standard is becoming an increasingly important focus of the digital publishing industry," said HP Indigo division product marketing manager Eli Israeli.

The entire system has been designed to be compatible with the UP3i communication standard.

"This is very much the machine communication standard and delivers it in real time, something JDF cannot quite do," said Quennell.

The booklet maker and trimmer are the Duplo DBM-500 series units launched at the IGAS show in Tokyo in September last year. The units are Duplo's fourth generation of high-speed, heavy duty bookletmakers.

Story by Philip Chadwick