London financial print specialist Kube Print is poised to maximise the opportunities presented by buoyant stock market following a £400,000 digital print investment that includes a BQ470 Horizon four-clamp perfect binder from Intelligent Finishing Systems.
“We are producing a lot more financial print,” explains Adam Frost, Kube Print managing director. “Digital run lengths are increasing and the new binder will help us meet demand for that and also enable us to bring litho perfect binding in-house.”
Kube Print’s investment programme, which is hoped will help the £3.7m turnover business grow by more than 20% to £4.5m within a year, includes two Ricoh ProC901 digital printing presses. They support the existing HP Indigos – a 5500 and a 3050 – and Oces – 2 x VP6200s and a 2110. Litho print is produced on a five-colour Heidelberg XL75 with Anilox coater and Inpress Control.
A raft of finishing solutions were also added as part of the investment programme including a Col-Tec Setmaster collator picked to support the planned increase in litho PUR work. “We were completing a lot of digital perfect bound work in-house but sending the litho work out,” states Mr Frost.
“The real problem for us was that producing litho runs of up to 1,000 was quite expensive and now we can complete that in-house much more cost effectively. We were just not winning the work when we quoted. We have already seen that changing and have started to win those jobs.”
As for the impact the new Horizon BQ470 has made Mr Frost comments: “It is one of the best decisions we have made. It is already justifying itself. We expect to see ROI in two years – as long as the economy continues to improve.”
Running at 1,350cph, the Horizon BQ470 offers fully automated set-up through the intuitive icon based LCD touchscreen to produce books up to 65mm thick. It is equipped with two large application rollers for strong, high-quality binds and a separate side glue tank for added flexibility.
Mr Frost reviewed other market available systems before making the final decision: “We looked at it at Ipex, along with other binders, and liked its ease of use, build quality and production speed. We were also impressed with the good ideas it incorporates in its design, particularly with regard to the fast change over between EVA and PUR.”
