The EB 600 joins a raft of exisiting hot-melt binding machines at the company, part of security printer Acors Group.

“We looked at all the rivals, said founder Malcolm Acors. “Heidelberg was excellent on health and safety, extracting fumes and debris. Other kit took a long time to set up and and clean, this one is easy to clean and shut down.

“There are a lot of entry-level PUR machines capable of 200 copies an hour but that wasn't man enough for us. The new kit runs off 600 to 1,300 books an hour.”

"It was bought with a specific contract in mind but we are confident we will generate trade work to fill the capacity," he added. "Some jobs where a document will be well handled and the user cannot risk splitting or losing pages require the resilience of the PUR adhesive. There are digital jobs, too, which can only be bound using this gluing method.”

Acors, who runs the company with son Thomas and paid around £140,000 for the kit, explained hot-melt kit was fine for short-life catalogues but not for books constantly referred every day.

Acors liked the sealed nozzle system of the EB 600 and said the kit was "automated where it mattered" but was not overly complicated to operate. 

Acors said the EB 600 would mainly handle runs from 100 copies up to 25,000 copies although Ultimate Kelmscott had higher-volume binders in place.

His Billericay company runs six Heidelberg litho machines including two B2 Speedmasters and B3 equipment. It also runs Kodak and Xerox kit including NexPress and Vario machines and is looking at further investments including an iGen4 Diamond Edition around April this year.