The machine, installed at the Aylesbury-based digital, litho, and large-format printer in March, will allow Pelican Print to produce thicker perfect-bound books in-house. This will save the company time by allowing it to put digital work from its HP Indigo straight through the PowerSquare, rather than through its Muller stitching line.
This, said Gary Pople, head of digital services at Pelican Print, will allow the business to break through to larger jobs.
He said: “One of our major clients has added a number of sites to its expanding business. As a result, the number of publications that they are ordering has grown significantly.
“This has meant that we had to decide how we were going to best solve the increase of work in the post-press area of our digital workflow.”
The machine’s versatility – combining the four processes of stitching, folding, spine forming, and trimming in one unit – attracted Pople, who saw it first at a Morgana open house in 2021.
Pelican Print had started to review its digital finishing capabilities prior to the pandemic, he added, as it had been shuttling work from its digital production factory over to a separate litho site on the other side of Aylesbury.
He added: “That then often meant interrupting a longer run on our Muller Martini stitching line in order to produce a short run job.”
The machine will be used predominantly for short runs of 50-100, though may see runs of up to 500.
Its ability, similarly, to produce booklets of up to 10.4mm thick (around 208 pages of 80gsm, or 224 of 70gsm) will allow Pelican Print to finish higher pagination work in-house, where previously it would have had to send the work out to a trade finisher for perfect binding.
The purchase is the largest Pelican has made in around five years, since it bought its HP Indigo digital press. Pople said the Morgana slotted right into production after it was turned on at the wall and staff were given a few hours’ training.
Scott Brookes, Pelican Print’s managing director, said: “When I saw the machine in action, I was immediately impressed by its capabilities and its productivity.”
