The company claims the binder, which was installed at Tewkesbury eight weeks ago, has almost doubled the output of its previous binder. The site is responsible for printing magazines and other matter for clients including Emap, Littlewoods and Homebase.

Pindar has so far ploughed £3m into Tewkesbury facility and bolstered output over its 12 months of ownership in response to increasing demand from the publishing sector. Alongside the Muller Martini it has also spent £500,000 on improving systems and efficiency across the business.

The investment in IT systems includes expenditure on a new management information system, a customer relationship management system and time and attendance software.

It has also created and filled approximately 40 new jobs at the site, comprising 30 on the shop floor and 10 in office areas such as sales, purchasing and HR.

Pindar chief executive Andrew Dalton told printweek.com: "We budgeted to spend £5m in the first 18 months of acquiring the business. We've spent £3m to date."
 
Before Pindar acquired the Tewkesbury plant, Cooper Clegg had invested less than a £1m in capital expenditure over five years. "So [when we acquired it] we had to do a lot of mundane stuff, such as installing a direct dial phone system, investing in the IT infrastructure, management information, and data capture," Dalton said.

Since the acquisition, Dalton said that the site's output has been boosted by 15% by improvements, including the addition of a fourth shift to the working day and restructuring existing staff into new crews. He added that the group is also well on track to achieving more ambitious output targets at the end of April.

Pindar is also examining whether or not to invest in a new printing press at Tewkesbury. "We spent some money with some independent market research companies to look at the publishing market in its various guises, from consumer to customer magazines," Dalton said. "We are getting a picture of what is happening to pagination levels in the next few years." Dalton added that the firm will make a decision to but another press in the next six to 12 months.

Besides its investment at the Tewkesbury plant, Pindar last year installed a new Lithoman III short grain press at its Scarborough site and 10- and 12-colour Heidelberg Speedmaster presses in Preston.