The company's Dagenham site installed a Horizon BQ-500 iCE perfect binder from Intelligent Finishing Systems at the end of May.

“We have been using a Horizon BQ-270V single clamp perfect binder and were pleased with the equipment and service provided from IFS,” said Steven Atkins, head of litho at Paragon CC.

“As part of an investment into our perfect binding capabilities we identified the need for a system that offered greater efficiencies for longer runs.”

The BQ-270V was retained and will run alongside the new binder.

Launched last year, the four clamp BQ-500’s headline specs mirror those of the BQ-480: namely a maximum production speed of 800bph when configured with automatic book block feeding and 21 automated sections from cycle speed through to milling, side-glue and nipper settings amongst others.

It also features interchangeable EVA and PUR glue tanks and can handle the same book formats, from 145x105mm to 320x320mm in thicknesses from 1-65mm.

However, there are several enhancements over its predecessor including deeper scoring for a thicker cover, a new gluing mechanism, glue overflow detection, a faster nipping changeover and a switchable exit mechanism for thick book or PUR book production.

“It was easy to familiarise [ourselves] with the new features, and they offer improvements on usability and flexibility of the equipment. It also gives us the additional capacity we needed and delivers the required productivity,” said Atkins.

As well as benefiting from a raft of new features, the circa £120,000 Horizon BQ-500 was developed to run with Horizon’s iCE LiNK cloud-based workflow as standard, which, thanks to its open API architecture, can be integrated with existing workflows and MIS.

Paragon CC is part of Paragon Group, the UK's biggest print business.