The Pudsey, West Yorkshire-based firm invested around £82,000 in the two machines, which were installed in July. It bought them from Intelligent Finishing Systems, with which it has had a working relationship for the past four years.
“When we started the business six and half years ago we did everything from scratch and we mainly had secondhand machinery,” explains director Ian Bradley.
“We started out die-cutting but added laminating and binding in-house to meet demand. These have worked well and we have built the business up. We felt it was the right time to invest to improve reliability and quality and increase productivity.”
The firm chose the SPF/FC-200A bookletmaker to replace an ageing Horizon SPF/FC-20A, which it part exchanged.
“We were used to the existing Horizon line and it was time to upgrade it. We also wanted a second collating tower as we were starting to get more 44pp-plus booklets and longer-run work so we needed another tower to handle that much more efficiently,” said Bradley.
The 4,500bph SPF/FC-200A features a 200-programme job memory storage for instant recall, an icon-based touchscreen for job set-up and two 10-station VAC-Turbo 100 PowerCollators. The advanced suction rotor drum feeding system operates on a wide variety of paper stocks at high speeds.
The company bought the Horizon BQ270V perfect binder as its first step into offering the service. “IFS helped us with getting some support from the Regional Growth Fund, which is something I’d heard about from word of mouth,” said Bradley.
“The investment fit the criteria by creating another job with the extra work that the binder produces. We felt that it was a great service to add to the range of other capabilities we already offered and we needed another pair of hands to help with that.
“Our perfect binding service has started off well. The BQ270V is a hand-fed unit so we predominantly use it for short runs, although we’ve just done 15,000 booklets for somebody.”
The 500bph single-clamp BQ270V, which is operated via a touchscreen control, features automatic air-suction cover feeding with inline scoring job programming.
“These systems have proven to be a great way of adding value and have also helped us build stronger relationships with existing customers while attracting new ones. They have certainly opened up doors for us,” said Bradley.
Leeds Die Cutting, which has five staff and a turnover of £180,000, serves printers mainly located in the Leeds, Bradford, Huddersfield and Yorkshire areas.
