The Medical Informatics Unit at the Nuffield Department of Clinical Laboratory Sciences of the university has bought an Elite perfect binder, a CaseMatic hard cover maker, a creaser and laminator.

Robin Roberts-Gant, production director at the department, said: "The primary reason that we bought the Fastbind equipment was to enable us to produce student course books and other bound products in-house.

"We could see an immediate annual saving of £2,000 from work that we outsourced. Some of the hardback books we outsourced were very expensive because of traditional set-up costs that we were charged on small runs."
 
The department can now perfect bind and finish around 60 soft-cover books and 20 hardback books an hour previously when it was asked to produce one or two hard-books at a time it was too expensive to handle in-house.

Covers are now printed on a Xerox 242 and then laminated. The hardcover is produced on the CaseMatic hardcover maker and then bound on the Elite XT binder.

The inplant supplements its income with a variety of work from other departments within the university and external work. The Fastbind equipment has also enabled it to increase the services it offers.