40% More Production With New Finishing Systems

Boosting productivity by as much as 40 per cent has been made possible by the installation of a new Perfecta 76TVC guillotine and Horizon VAC-Turbo/SPF booklet production line.

Graphic Arts Equipment (GAE) installed the equipment for for Surrey (UK) commercial printer Riverprint, where the bindery investment followed 18 months after a change in press format that resulted in added pressure at the post-press stage.

The VAC-Turbo Powercollator with SPF-200A includes two 10-station tower collators that is claimed to collate 10,000 sets per hour and a stitch, fold and trim system that is said to produce up to 4,000 books per hour.

The overall line replaced an older, manual operation.

Riverprint's managing director, Simon Granville-Jones, explained: "When we moved from B3 to SRA2 it meant we could do more colour-work and in-line sealing.

We were able to impose four A4 pages on SRA2 rather than two so we needed a guillotine to match." He explained: "The Perfecta was the only choice.

It is superb and I'm sure we couldn't have done the same volume of work on any other machine.

It is accurate, easy to operate and more efficient.

We are doing 35 per cent to 40 per cent more work on it and it gives us more control." Granville-Jones added: "Our old machine was struggling and it was beginning to cost with repairs.

The new Horizon is a world apart as it is far more efficient and gives a much better variety of size of products, such as DL booklets." He said that the company is also finishing many more booklets than it would have run on the old system.

Having 20 bins rather than 16 has given the business a better advantage and it can also finish odd-sized booklets in-house, which is more cost effective.

And he added: "We are getting smoother throughput and the investment has created more capacity.

The operators are far happier and a phrase we hear a lot of is that they couldn't have done this on the old equipment.

It has also boosted morale as it demonstrates that we are a company that is committed to investment." Riverprint is a long-standing GAE customer and Granville-Jones said the quality of the equipment is the key.

He said: "The industry is very tight and with our recent investment we believe we have got the potential to be more competitive.".

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