The Letchworth Garden City print firm has also sold its packaging operation to Hartgraph in Amersham as part of the move to concentrate on its online offering.
“We realised about six months ago that was the route we wanted to go down and we’ve got there quite quickly considering the complexities,” said managing director Jon Lancaster.
Lancaster said he had sold the firm’s Vega Mira folder-gluer and packaging client list to Hartgraph because that type of work was “too manual”.
“We have exited non-automatable areas of print, what I call offline work, and have walked away from some aspects of work that we used to do previously,” he said.
The firm has also exited B3 litho with the sale of its four-colour Speedmaster SX52.
Printed Easy’s print setup now comprises a push-to-stop specification six-colour Heidelberg Speedmaster XL106 with coater, two HP Indigo 12000 HD B2 digital presses, and a seven-colour Indigo 7900.
“We are successfully routing work to different presses automatically, and 97-99% is automated now,” Lancaster said.
The business has also recently upgraded its extensive in-house finishing facilities with a £200,000 spend on new kit. This included a new Horizon StitchLiner Mark III from Intelligent Finishing Systems that has replaced the firm’s ten-year-old StitchLiner 5500.
The new StitchLiner can run at up to 12,000bph in two-up production mode. It can also handle A4 landscape books at 5,300bph.
Printed Easy’s wire-binding capabilities have also been revamped with a new Renz Mobi 500 binding machine that runs at up to 800 products per hour, together with an AP 360 heavy-duty punch.
“Wire binding has been completely overhauled to offer more sizes, thicknesses, and wire colours,” Lancaster said.
“We haven’t lost anyone from production because of the changes, they’ve moved into other areas. My expectation is that we will now be able to do more turnover with the same headcount.”
The website allows users to create jobs in custom formats, in any quantity. It is targeted at business-to-business users including printers, creative agencies and resellers.
“I’m very pleased, it’s more streamlined now and we’ve seen great growth over the summer. Our focus is on quality from end-to-end – from user experience to delivery on time, in full, and with the correct print quality,” Lancaster added.
He said that Printed Easy’s most popular products currently were saddle-stitched and perfect bound brochures, with wire-bound also expected to join the bestsellers on the back of the new Renz kit.
