With capacity increasing, Northside managing director Gary White said it is also looking to invest around £600,000 in new HP Indigo kit in Q2 or Q3 2017.
The finishing kit spend of £185,000 mainly went on a Neopost-supplied Duplo DBM-600 bookletmaker with Watkiss Spine Master. Northside also brought in three pieces of finishing equipment from Morgana: a DigiFold Pro, a DigiBook 200 and an Autocreaser Pro385. It also bought in a double-sided Foliant Mercury 400 SF laminator, supplied by Reprocentre. The bookletmaker, Autocreaser and laminator came in two weeks ago and the DigiBook and DigiFold are coming in this week.
White said: “Because of the sheer volume of orders that are coming in, we are just so busy that we have found the guys are working a lot of overtime.
“We found that the team were being put under too much pressure and we are confident that we will continue to grow so we decided it would be time to invest to at least try and speed up production.”
Around half of the investment went on the bookletmaker, which joins Northside’s existing DBM-500. Northside also invested in a new feeder for the DBM, which White said had doubled its capacity.
He said the bookletmaker had allowed Northside to meet the demands of customers looking for 140mmx140mm square books. The Foliant joins an Autobond laminator and the DigiBook replaces an outgoing PUR binder.
Northside exhibited as TradeDigitalPrint at the inaugural PrintWeekLive! trade show earlier this month, and has already signed up for next year’s show on 7-8 March 2018 at the Wasps Arena, Coventry.
White said: “I didn’t know what to expect but I thought it was really well attended and a good quality of people were there. We definitely generated quite a few leads.”
Launched last September to supply a trade-only web-to-print service, TradeDigitalPrint, alongside DigitalPrinting comprise 43-staff Northside’s two sub-brands.
The self-described “oldest and largest digital printing company in Northern Ireland” has sales of around £4.5m and is currently on a rolling recruitment drive, with nine staff employed in the last seven months.
