Workington general commercial printer Firpress chose to expand its portfolio of services to offer landscape booklets with its purchase of an IFS-supplied Horizon SPF/FC-200L bookletmaker with two VAC-1000 collators.

The spend was part of a £200,000 company-wide investment programme that included the creation of a dedicated digital department.

Sales Director Paul Williamson explains: “We needed a system that could handle short run digital print, long run litho and thousands of NCR sets. Investing in the bookletmaker with two towers meant we could collate NCRs while completing the long and short runs.

“We also liked its ability to run landscape booklets. Now we sell that service much more proactively and it adds another string to our bow. We wanted to be able to offer a range of finishing solutions at our fingertips. That way customers have no need to go anywhere else.

“We use a couple of really good finishing houses, but they are not on our doorstep, so we like to keep as much as we can in house. As a result we have invested in a lot of finishing systems in the past couple of years including folders, collators, stitchers and tab cutters.”

Capable of 4,500bph, the Horizon SPF/FC-200L, the first of its kind installed in the region, couples all the highly automated features of the successful SPF/FC200A bookletmaker with the ability to feed A4 landscape sheets up to 640mm in length. JDF-ready, the system offers instant set-ups via a large icon-based colour touchscreen for user-friendly operation. The screen can be used for on-the-run fine tune adjustments as well as the store and recall of up to 200 jobs.

He concludes: “We are doing more landscape work that we previously did and are looking to add more.”