Five Castles Press has switched saddle stitching to a Horizon StitchLiner MkIII to increase finishing capacity and to cope with new types of work.
“We have recently bought a local printing company,” says managing director Rob Burnett, “and needed to increase our production to handle the additional workload which included A4 landscape work.” The Ipswich printer had previously used a StitchLiner 5500 which lacked this capability.
This had been purchased with four VAC-600 collating towers as a means of collating flat sheets and eight page signatures for perfect binding as well as stitched work Burnett explains. Then last year he visited Horizon’s European headquarters near Hamburg.
Burnett says: “We were on one of the IFS VIP visits and had a demonstration of the StitchLiner MkIII. We were so amazed by the increased production and its A4 landscape capability that we put it on our shopping list.”
The trade in value of the 5500 was also useful in helping to swing the decision.
The investment continues a relationship with IFS which has supplied a BQ-470 PUR perfect binder, CRF-creaser folder and Perfecta 92 guillotine which is used for book trimming.
In the press hall the company runs Speedmaster XL75s and Heidelberg digital press as well as wide format Roland DGs. It has a StitchMaster 350 to handle longer run work from the litho presses.
Five Castles is part of the Bravo Print group which at the start of this year bought the name and assets of Alphaprint in Colchester after it was placed in liquidation, moving work from Colchester to Ipswich while retaining offices in the Essex city.
Five Castles Press has replaced a Horizon 550 saddle stitcher with the latest version of the Horizon device. The switch from old to new technology was completely smooth says the company.
