Booklet-Making Sees Sales Soar By 20%

With increasing sales of all products worldwide, buoyant sales after Ipex 2006 and developing OEM business, Watkiss Automation has grown sales during the 12 months by 20 per cent.

That performance includes the company's established products but excludes the new Powersquare.

The book-making machine has received GBP3.3 million of orders and, to meet demand, Watkiss has recruited additional staff in production and administration roles, increasing the total number of employees by approximately 10 per cent.

Powersquare is a complete book-making machine, which includes stitching, folding, spine forming and trimming to produce Squareback books up to 200 pages thick.

It operates on-line to digital printers, or as an offline unit.

The company believes that despite unfavourable exchange rates, it is demonstrating the value of innovation in product design and efficient manufacturing to succeed in international markets.

Watkiss designs and manufactures collating, booklet-making and print finishing equipment for the digital and offset printing markets.

The company's sales director, Paul Attew, commented: "Although we have seen a steady growth in most product areas, it has been especially significant for the Spinemaster, which has increased three-fold.

The market has embraced the concept of the squareback book and print buyers specify it as their preferred finish." And he continued: "Demand for off-line machines has been higher than expected.

For many customers it is a viable alternative to perfect binding and it's faster, cheaper to run and, of course, more secure thanks to the stitched spine.".

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