Efficient and flexible production from SoloPress’s new HP PageWide T250 web fed inkjet press is being supported by a Horizon HOF-400 high speed offline feeder from IFS.

The Southend-on-Sea company, founded in 1999 through an informal collaboration between two start ups, produces a wide range of commercial print including leaflets, flyers and brochures mainly for small businesses.

The HP PageWide T250 inkjet press joined HP Indigo and iGen digital presses and Heidelberg SpeedMaster litho presses. Solopress also operates a range of wide format production systems.

Head of Operations, Jack Clifford, explains the investment: “We wanted something that would help us stitch the short runs from the new HP PageWide T250. We easily manage the long runs with our existing machinery. For short runs we were spending more time setting up the stitcher than running it. The HOF-400 allows us to manage these shorter runs more efficiently by loading collated sets with many different titles.

“It also gives us the flexibility to either complete jobs using the HOF or the hoppers. If there is a run with a high page count it makes more production sense to use the hoppers. If it is a small pagination then it is best to run it through the HOF-400.”

As for choosing the system he says: “When we were making the investment we spoke to IFS to see what would be the best solution for stitched books of low quantity. The HOF-400 ticked all the boxes. We expect it to enable us to achieve a 20% to 30% increase in output.”

The operation has also added a second HOF-400 to its bindery line up to support short run production from other presses.

The Horizon HOF-400 high speed offline feeder provides flexible system configurations such as cover feeding, sheet insert on, variable page count, bleed trimming and creasing for digital printing. The HOF-400 finishing system can also be connected with the finishing devices for the offset outputs to process both digital and offset print.