Metro Commercial Printing has brought all its booklet production work inhouse following investment in a Horizon SPF/FC-200A stitch/fold/trim line supplied by Intelligent Finishing Systems Ltd.
“We have been taking on more and more booklet work that we then had to subcontract out,” explains Andrew O Brien, managing director of the Watford operation that counts The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Pentland Group, owners of Lacoste, Kickers and Speedo, among its clientele.
Established in 1986, the operation recently commissioned a Heidelberg SpeedMaster 52 and found the increased capacity helped win more booklet work. “We have picked up a few little contracts and to ensure they were cost effective it was time to bring the service in house,” comments Mr O’Brien. “It made sense to bring the costs inhouse. I would rather be paying staff a little more in overtime than sending the work out.
“We had great stitch fold trim suppliers but being able to produce the work ourselves enables us to have a bit of flexibility in the prices we charge. We can also be confident in saying yes to more work knowing we can meet the turnaround times.”
Ease of set up was one of the key attractions of the 4,500bph JDF-ready SPF/FC-200A. Comments Mr O’Brien: “It is simple to run and our staff very quickly became competent so much so we were up and running straight away. Because it is so quick to make ready there has been no need to take on extra staff either.
The system features a 200-programme job memory storage for instant recall, an icon-based touch-screen for job set-up and a 10-station VAC-Turbo 100 PowerCollator. The patented Horizon advanced suction rotor drum feeding system operates effectively on a wide variety of paper stocks at high speeds. Accuracy and reliability are assured by mis-feed, double feed and jamming sensors on each bin and the feed error history can be monitored via the touchscreen.
Before choosing the Horizon SPF/FC-200A Mr O’Brien researched market available solutions stating: “We couldn’t afford the space Muller Martini systems or a Horizon StitchLiner would require and one of the trade houses we deal with has an SPF/FC200A so we knew the quality of work it produced. It seemed to be the best solution on the market.”
He concludes: “It should make us a more profitable by enabling us to keep revenues in house and we expect it to have paid for itself within a couple of years.”
