Established in 1998, the Greater Manchester-based business took delivery of the device in May. It was supplied by Intelligent Finishing Systems (IFS), who said pricing for the binder starts from £34,950.

Northern Collating has 20 years’ experience in print finishing including Wire-o and coil binding, collating, shrinkwrapping, guillotining, and drilling.

Managing director Neil Sanderson said: “We dipped our toe into the perfect binding market a couple of years ago. Then we got to the stage where we wanted to have a faster, better quality, system.

“We liked the Horizon solution and we had heard a lot of good things about it. It is highly automated and easy to set up. Operators can jump quickly on and off it.  Before we had to prescore covers but now that is completed inline which saves time. It also seemed like parts were easy to get hold of if we ever needed to.”

The 500cph device offers high-quality perfect binding and on-demand production of variable thickness books. It includes an automated, sensor-activated digital caliper system which consistently measures book block thickness and automatically transfers this data to the binder for quick, automated setup for books of different thicknesses.

The machine also features a 10.4-inch intelligent colour touchscreen, job programming, and a compact configuration.

“We are very pleased with it. It has helped us futureproof the business. Perfect binding was not something we have pushed before but now we can,” said Sanderson.

“It also allows us to manage a variety of run lengths. We got a job in today that was 10 books, and the customer could easily come back with 500. We can be prepared for that. We can also now confidently promote the service to customers and present ourselves as more of a one-stop-shop.”

With four staff, Northern Collating has an annual turnover of £220,000.