Flexpress, Leicester, has chosen three Horizon systems from Intelligent Finishing Systems (IFS) to help it enhance its perfect bound book production capabilities.

The new bindery additions, a Horizon BQ-280 PUR single clamp perfect binder, Horizon HT-30C three-sided trimmer and a Horizon CRF 362 creaser folder, will add PUR gluing capabilities, streamline production throughput and enhance high quality folding and creasing respectively.

Steve Wenlock, Managing Director, of the trade only printing company working with print resellers including publishers, explains: “Having just extended the running hours of our HP Indigo 12000 we are targeting more perfect bound books to help fill the increased capacity. We believe that offering a PUR bound book is more appealing to our trade clients than an EVA equivalent. We wanted to be able to offer our clients a book that was bound using the strongest method available which is PUR. So, we swapped out our old Horizon BQ270 EVA binder for the new PUR system.”

He continues: “The Horizon HT-30C book trimmer will enable us to run an end to end one person binding operation.  Our operator can load the deep pile feeder and unload books at deep pile stacker.  Labour is getting increasingly expensive so rather than stretch the capacity of our guillotine operators it made sense to be able to bind and trim the books at the same time, using the same person. It will also eliminate any guillotine bottlenecks.”

The Horizon CRF-362 was chosen to compliment an existing Morgana system. Wenlock says: “It will help us keep pace with demand as opposed to target new markets and ensure we provide the highest quality for clients’ projects.

“We considered another Morgana but felt the Horizon was a better fit this time around. We liked the Horizon’s accuracy, its feeding system, the fact it can also perforate and we’ve always been impressed with the reliability of Horizon equipment and the service we receive from IFS.”

As for choosing Horizon Wenlock states: “I’ve been familiar with the equipment since my visit to Horizon in Germany and felt then that when we needed more capacity, it would be the machine to go for.”

When it comes to return on investment he says the operation’s focus is more on delivering a right-first-time product and the initial impact is positive adds Steve: “We’ve already seen a slight upturn in volume but we expect this to rise to three times our previous volume once our marketing starts to bite.”

As for working with IFS he adds: “We’ve always enjoyed an excellent relationship with IFS. They’ve look after us well and we rate their products and service highly.”