The machine, which cost around £168,000, was built to the Wolverhampton-based firm’s requirements before Moll (UK) installed it at the end of June.

“We’ve traditionally always produced wallet envelopes and pocket envelopes with papers up to 150gsm but some of the paper merchants and large contract stationers that we serve said that they were getting asked for heavyweight papers to convert into envelopes,” said sales director Brett Hopper.

“They were having to either buy them from abroad or have them handmade because the papers were too heavy to be folded on traditional envelope machines. So we started researching the market and decided on the Moll Versa-Fold, which we’re going to use specifically for converting into envelopes.”

The Moll Versa-Fold is a high-speed machine that allows for a wide variety of layouts. It can be used for gluing, forming pockets and final folding and its plow-fold table can be used behind paper folder systems to add more options.

“It can fold papers from 150gsm, which is where our current machines go to, up to 600gsm, so it opens up that market for us into heavyweight papers and will allow us to produce some of the more prestigious envelopes that are made with these types of papers,” said Hopper.

“We researched the market but the other machines that we looked at couldn’t do a lot of things that the Versa-Fold can do. We have our own cutting section here and we wanted to be able to use our existing equipment with it to keep as much of our work in-house as possible,” said Hopper.

Opal Envelopes has 25 staff and a turnover of around £2m. It produces envelopes and offers print and mailing services to customers including reel-fed envelope manufacturers, paper merchants, printers, print management firms and large stationery companies.