The remnants of what was once a small village near the mouth of the river Avon can still be discerned but today Portishead is best known for giving its name to a 1980s pop band and for being close to the M5 motorway. It is also across the Bristol Channel from Wales and Cardiff, home to Westdale Press. This produces a constant stream of flat sheet print destined to be folded and bound in Portishead at Western Print Finishers.
At one time this was Ware’s, one of a several trade binders in the Bristol and Somerset area that have suffered financial misfortune. It was taken over by T+K Maxx and then by Westdale Press. Alan Padbury, Westdale managing director is clear as to the reasons. He needed to secure a perfect binding capability for the work generated by his sheetfed and web presses. Pelican Print Finishing might have seemed an alternative, but being part of the Stephens & George group and covering much of the same print territory as Westdale as well focusing on long run work for the likes of Polestar. meant this was not really an option. “We were doing more and more perfect bound and PUR work as that side of the business has grown with the long perfectors,” he says. “But about three years ago there was a change in the market.”
When TK (Ware) closed its doors, Padbury says he wanted to step in at once to retain as much of the business and as many of its people as possible, but there was an issue with the landlord which delayed matters. Four weeks later customers had found alternative suppliers.
Today many of the people have returned to run a business which operates a Kolbus Ratiobinder, Inventa sewing machine, a brace of guillotines and a line up of MBO folders. One of the guillotines has been replaced by a Polar from the Westdale factory while an MBO K8 folder is the latest investment and the first folder of its type in the UK. It will not be the last. Padbury has a policy of continuous replacement of equipment and likes the K8 so much that has calculated there is space for a second machine alongside the first.
The K8 is an unusual machine in today’s environment where flexibility offered by combination folders has been the order of the day. The K8 is an all knife machine. This provides a significant space saving advantage. “We compared the K8 and the KH82,” he explains. “But I liked the K8 and wanted to give it a try. We do so much folding and in so many formats that we could afford something different to the norm by buying what is essentially a fixed format folder. As a printer we are Mr Flexible, so to have a folder to deal with lots of A4 sections seems a little unusual, but it has proved its worth.”
He recalls the business having a 32pp all knife folder from Camco, a long since vanished supplier. “That was similar,” he says.
The modern folder is one-man operated, helped by a Palamides unit supplied by Friedheim International at the delivery to stack and wrap the 16pp sections as they emerge. The compact format of the folder makes it easy to step from feeder to delivery of the machine and there is no need to keep different attachments close to hand as is needed on the combination and buckle folders. Set up is fast as it needs to be because if the format remains the same, the paper most certainly doesn’t. This can range from 80gsm to 200gsm from the sheetfed presses, 60gsm from the web, and from nicely coated stock to uncoated sheets, an area where Westdale has made itself a name.
“We are the industry’s Old tarts, we’ll do anything for anybody,” he says. “We love taking on complex and difficult work.” Having both web and sheetfed presses has appeal for catalogue companies that like to switch between the processes and can be concerned about print consistency. And because of rather than in spite of the internet, there is a healthy respect among internet retailers for print as the means to drive visitors to return to websites. There is also special supplement work for magazine publishers, a chunky property guide that is branded with the main title and brimful of ads. These publishers want to the best quality on the right papers, while some mail order work finds that uncoated matches their ethos. And Westdale has a great deal of experience in printing on these difficult papers.
It works best where photography and design understand the need for strong contrasts in images and how the paper will respond when printing, let alone folding. The repro skills to deliver the plates are also essential. “You have to be thinking about uncoated from the start,” he adds, “and we can help customers to understand what to expect from the printed result, which is not always obvious from the initial proof.”
Because of its all-knife method, there are rules to the way that sections can be imposed at prepress, less necessary with a combination machine. “The biggest drawback is that I can’t get my head around the imposition,” says Padbury. Fortunately there are those that can and the other folders can cope with the K8 schemes if they are needed to when there is a rush of work set out with the K8</a impositions. “This is why we think a second machine will suit us,” he continues.
Westdale installed the MBO K8 folder at its plant in Portishead. This has since been closed and the equipment moved across to the company’s main plant in Cardiff.
