The commercial and graphic communications company invested in a 4X4 B2+ Foliant Mercury 530SF heavy-duty industrial laminator, a Horizon BQ-470 four-clamp perfect binder and a Horizon HT30C Trimmer.
The kit from Intelligent Finishing Systems (IFS) cost around £200,000 in total and was installed two months ago to serve design agencies, marketing departments, SMEs, charities and blue-chip firms.
Managing director Phil Sudwell said: “We run a print-on-demand service for mostly short-run work and were outsourcing PUR binding.
“We had toyed with the idea of binding work and decided to bring it in house for digital and litho work for reasons of quality, speed and reaction times.”
His 20-staff company in Corsham, Wiltshire, turns over £2.5m from litho and digital print. It runs two Koenig & Bauer presses and an HP Indigo 7900, installed in February.
The new binder and trimmer are additions while the Foliant laminator has replaced a single-side machine. Sudwell aims to take his turnover to £3m within a year.
He said: “We wanted a system that could laminate both sides in one pass and handle light material. The older laminator was slow and it was time to reinvest.”
The 25m/min 530SF laminator offers tighter registration and has a Heidelberg suction feeder.
The Horizon BQ-470 can process up to 1,350bph and features instant makereadies for runs-of-one. It can bind up to 65mm thickness and offers fully-automated setup through an icon-based LCD touchscreen.
Horizon's HT30 three-side trimmer features automated job setups and quick changeovers with the ability to store up to 40 different book jobs in its memory.
It operates offline to trim perfect-bound books at speeds up to 200cph. A colour touchscreen allows all set-ups to be performed with full automation.
Both systems were chosen to enhance Park Lane Press’s book production capabilities and address a bottleneck in the bindery.
Sudwell added: “PUR is a new process for us. We had a smaller hotmelt system which took time to set up. The new systems are faster to makeready and easier to run.”
