The company installed a Horizon HT-30 one-knife three-edge trimmer from Intelligent Finishing Systems (IFS) and a Renz Autopunch 360 in July, before adding a Horizon AFC-566 six-plate automated folder, also from IFS, last month.

According to ILF managing director Laurence Felton, the folder will allow it to offer a wider range of products than previously, while also bringing a small amount of work that had been outsourced back in-house.

He said: "While we were able to do a lot of folding on our previous machine, the new folder is in a completely different league. We can now do much more complex folds and signatures.

"We didn’t need to put much work out because we only tender for work that we can do, but it means that the little that we did outsource can now stay in-house. More importantly though are the new products we can produce and new customers."

Felton added that the HT-30 will free up ILF’s existing guillotines to handle long-run work. He said: "One of our guillotines has been running flat out trimming for short-run book production. This will take the pressure off that and leave it to handle longer-run work.

"With the guillotine we were also reliant on our operators. We wanted something that would provide us with complete consistency."

ILF’s Autopunch 360 is an upgrade of a smaller Renz machine, which is able to run at 100 strokes per minute. It comes with a custom-built die, which the company requested for a specific job.