The machine has a list price of £200,000 and was purchased last week. It replaces a number of smaller bookletmakers, which will be kept for “disaster recovery” but will effectively be taken off duty.
Latcham managing director Mike Hughes said he had searched the market for a while before settling on the Duplo system.
Hughes said: “We have been winning quite a significant amount of digital booklet work from clients in financial services and in publishing. In particular, a recent publishing contract, which means we need to increase our capacity and require a much heavier duty machine that can meet our service level requirements.
“The machine is sophisticated in that it has additional scanning capability that means we can ensure that we account for every single page within every document. This is really important for us as we mainly produce contracts and policy documents.
“Our customers need to know we have the ability to provide that level of compliance, so they know we have produced exactly what we should have done. This machine has additional features to allow us to do that.”
Launched in February 2016, the iSaddle Pro combines Duplo's DSF-6000 sheet feeder with the iSaddle.
It is ideal for saddle-stitched booklets coming from high-volume digital presses and has a 610mm pile feeder.
“Our business has been growing significantly and the digital booklet format has been very very popular,” added Hughes.
“This will provide us with a much more robust and reliable solution to deliver high-quality for our customers.”
Latcham will also soon be installing a new MIS from Imprint, to replace its existing MIS, which will be up-and-running by January 2017.
The 90-staff company has been growing year-on-year for the past five years and most recently turned over £7.5m.
It is a Xerox Premier Partner and has a fleet of 11 Xerox digital printers.
The iSaddle was purchased at The Print Show, where Duplo also sold a DC-646i slitter-cutter-creaser to Rochdale-based Jones & Brooks, and a 600i booklet system to Newbury-based commercial printer Quadgraphics.
Its sales at the show topped £400,000.
