Most people go to the rolling green hills of Devon for some relaxation, to take advantage of a slower pace of life and a more laid back attitude. Things are less frantic in the South West, or so goes the theory.

Larkbeare Services, situated just outside Exeter, goes some way to proving that theory wrong, as far from taking things easy, the past 12 months have been extremely busy for the print finishing specialist.

The action started in December 2010, when the company invested £100,000 in new kit that included a Wohlenberg 115 guillotine from Friedheim. Six months later, an open house, when the great and the good descended on its premises, met with high praise, including some very positive comments from new BPIF chief executive Kathy Woodward, who called the event ‘a fantastic showcase’ for the industry.

In between these events, the Devon firm found time to move into the PUR binding sector after purchasing a KM 600 binder from Kolbus. The automated KM 600 features a 20-station gatherer, an HD 143 trimmer and cooling tower. The machine runs at 7,000 books per hour and will prepare work for the company’s substantial wire- and spiral-binding workload.

Launched at Drupa 2008, the KM 600 is the most recent development of the Kolbus Ratio binder family, which first launched in the mid 1980s and is now firmly established in the perfect binding marketplace.

According to Robert Flather, managing director at Kolbus UK, the machine was launched to enable the full makeready automation advantages of higher speed Kolbus binders available to a wider range of Kolbus customers.

"It was also identified that binders are required to manufacture products for increasingly variable markets. The KM 600 is designed to be able to adapt to these products and link with multiple infeed systems, without sacrificing the quality of the end-product," he says.

Kolbus has pitched the machine at a range of sectors including commercial printers, digital printers, book production houses and, of course, trade finishers.

New opportunities
Larkbeare installed its KM 600 at the end of May and it went into production by the middle of June. The unit represented an upgrade on the firm’s existing offering and marked its move into PUR binding.

"It has massively reduced our makeready times and easily doubled our perfect-binding capacity. Profitability will be improved via increased efficiency and higher machine loadings," says Larkbeare managing director Neil Oakley.

He added that customers had been asking Larkbeare to provide a PUR service, but that was not the only advantage the machine brought, as it also carried added benefits in the form of enabling the company to bind products that it couldn’t produce before because of size limitations.

Oakley says perfect bound products can be manufactured efficiently and economically with the machine, with folded sections clamped together in page sequence, the back edges rough cut and glued into a wraparound paper cover with a strong flexible glue, and finally the book block and covers trimmed flush resulting in an attractive, sturdy and durable finished product.

The method is suitable for a wide range of applications including paperback books, thick magazines and brochures, annual reports, travel guides, telephone directories, school text books, technical manuals and catalogues.

Oakley says that a range of cover options such as foldouts, pocket covers, index tabs, die-cutting and embossing can be incorporated and, unlike many other binding methods, the spine of a perfect bound product can be printed to complement design and create an eye-catching look.

The use of PUR glue is popular as it ensures a long-lasting, strong and flexible bind on more difficult to process materials. Heavily coated stock, heavy weight stock and even acetates will benefit from the extra performance characteristics of PUR glue. Sealants do not have a detrimental effect nor does the spine area need to be kept clear of print.

Although Oakley wouldn’t be drawn on the price of his Kolbus machine, he joked at the time that it was "more than my car but less than my house". However, the decision to opt for Kolbus was not a straight-forward one as the business surveyed the market before taking the plunge.

"We looked at the Wohlenberg City line of binders as well as the Acoro A5 from Muller Martini," he adds. What clinched it for Oakley in the end was the "combination of the automated set-up and fast-running speed of the Kolbus model". Indeed, the KM 600 is hitting its rated maximum speed on a regular basis, and the performance of the machine in general has more than lived up to expectations, according to Oakley. "Faultless," is how he describes it.

Smooth installation
The same can be applied to the installation of the machine, which Oakley says ran to plan with both pre- and after-sale service "excellent". In addition, training around the KM 600 has proved adequate.

No less than seven Larkbeare staff were sent to Kolbus’s training facility in Rahden, Germany. Training took place over a week with additional courses following the installation in May. "We also have Kolbus 3.60 Service Portal where we can contact a trainer or engineer 24 hours a day, seven days a week," adds Oakley.

However, while the training was comprehensive, the machine is not difficult to operate, according to Oakley, who has been impressed by the auto setting interface and the quality of the machine’s overall engineering build. As a result, he says the machine is very easy to use with the binding quality both "excellent and consistent".

Flather adds that the KM 600 is designed around operator friendliness, which he claims helps to minimise makeready and optimise product productivity and quality.

"The Co-Pilot operating system is intuitive and extremely helpful for the operator, enabling the KM 600 to be easy to use. In addition to this, the reliability of the machine is linked to the high levels of Kolbus service," he adds.

Key role
Oakley sees the machine as integral to his role as a trade finisher in aiding printers with their workload. He says that printers could soon find themselves burdened by their binderies, if they continue to bring capacity in-house rather than leaving it to the specialists.

"In certain markets printers will only be able to take on a job that they can finish in their own bindery, so their press capacity will always need to be matched to their bindery and vice versa," Oakley says. "Can you imagine a printer having to turn a job away because they cannot stitch it themselves and there is no support locally?"

Since the machine’s installation in June, Oakley says there have been numerous benefits to the bindery and therefore his ability to help printers avoid the above situation. "The Kolbus offers much shorter makeready times than before and we have also more than doubled our average running speeds," he adds. Oakley says that the machine definitely offers value for money, but has a word of advice for who the binder is suitable for "mainly the larger printers and the bigger trade finishers".

Flather is positive about the future of the machine. "It has proved to be a very successful machine with three installations this year, in the UK alone. The KM 600 continues to be a strong performer, demand remains high and Kolbus are producing on average, one KM 600 production line each week."

It’s certainly contributed to the positive impact Larkbeare is making on the print industry as a whole. In her recent visit to the company’s premises, BPIF chief executive Woodward said the company was a fantastic showcase for an industry that can "sometimes hide behind its bad news stories".

She said at the time: "There is so much shadow over the industry from the bigger guys that are going through restructuring that we can miss the guys underneath the shadow that are just getting on with it. Larkbeare is a very interesting family-run business that is thriving in a niche market."

Key to that success and the company’s ability to impress its influential peers is not resting on its laurels but investing to provide the best service possible. With their Kolbus purchase and a level-headed move into a new area of business, Oakley and his team at Larkbeare has continued to innovate and push forward and are reaping the rewards as a result.