The new machines were installed at the Belfast-based company’s recently opened second factory in Limestone Road over the Christmas period. It follows the company’s purchase of an XL 75-4 plus coater last summer.
Sales director Peter Bradley said: “The last 12 months have very much been a transitional period for Quinn’s and adding these two presses have been a goal for some time. It finally means we have the capacity to move the company to the next level. We are now on par with the best online printers in the UK.
“The new presses have enabled us to create a new pricing structure that means cheaper prices for the trade customers we service while retaining a solid margin. We had a record month in October and the new pricing structure can only mean more work.
“We’ve been training on the XL 75 for the past few weeks and produced the first commercial jobs on it two weeks ago.”
The Muller Martini Bravo has replaced two older stitching machines.
“We already had stitching but this new kit will mean we’ll be able to produce booklets faster and of a better quality as well as allowing us to offer a wider range of services,” said Bradley.
“We do a lot of booklet work. It’s something that we’re very good at and well priced on so we needed to make sure that we had the best kit for doing saddle-stitched booklets.”
The company’s next anticipated move will be to add perfect binding facilities to its Wilson Street factory.
“Perfect binding is something that we feel is definitely an option. It’s not a market that we get into that much because we do a lot of saddle-stitched booklets,” said Bradley.
“We do price for perfect binding jobs but we don’t always get them because we currently outsource the binding. Bringing that in-house is our first goal and then towards the end of this year or the start of next year we’ll be looking into getting a new B1 Heidelberg press to go into our Limestone Road premises.”
The firm bought the XL 75 as part of a deal with Heidelberg that will see InPress colour control being installed across all of its presses. The business also operates two Heidelberg SM 74s, one 10-colour and one four-colour.
Quinn’s, which has 85 full-time staff, restructured after investment in 2009 and adopted a new pre-paid philosophy to online trade print. Since then its turnover has grown from £1.5m to £7m.
It produces items including stationery, leaflets, flyers, posters, postcards, booklets and banners for other print businesses and print management companies.
