Northern Collating has future-proofed its service offering with a Horizon BQ-270V single clamp perfect binder from IFS.

Established in 1998, the Greater Manchester operation has 20 years’ experience in print finishing including Wire-o and coil binding, collating, shrink wrapping, guillotining and drilling. After moving into perfect binding with an entry level system it decided the time was right to enhance its capabilities.

Neil Sanderson, Managing Director, explains: “We dipped our toe into the perfect binding market a couple of years ago. Then we got to the stage where we wanted to have a faster, better quality, system.”

He continues: “We liked the Horizon solution and we had heard a lot of good things about it. It is highly automated and easy to set up. Operators can jump quickly on and off it.  Before we had to prescore covers but now that is completed inline which saves time. It also seemed like parts were easy to get hold of if we ever needed to.”

Northern Collating’s 500cph Horizon BQ-270V single-clamp perfect binder offers high-quality perfect binding and on-demand production of variable thickness books.

It includes an automated, sensor-activated digital caliper system which consistently measures book block thickness and automatically transfers this data to the binder for quick, automated set-up for books of different thicknesses. It features a large 10.4″ intelligent colour touchscreen, job programming, and a compact configuration.

It has been running well and Neil adds: “We are very pleased with it. It has helped us future-proof the business. Perfect binding was not something we have pushed before but now we can. It also allows us to manage a variety of run lengths. We got a job in today that was 10 books and the customer could easily come back with 500. We can be prepared for that. We can also now confidently promote the service to customers and present ourselves as more of a one-stop-shop.”