Amazon has published a behind the scenes blog about LTN5, what it claims is the largest book on demand print centre in the UK. Until now Amazon has barely acknowledged that it prints books on demand in this country let alone named the suppliers it works with.
Now it has produced a well illustrated promotional article for the facility at Dunstable in Bedfordshire. It has a capacity of 120,000 books a day printed on Canon inkjet machines with HP Indigos to print covers or other colour sections with Hunkelers inline to the Canons and binding from Muller Martini Vareo and Infinitrim trimmers.
The site is split in two sections, both of which are in full production during peak season towards the end of the year. This amounts to “a variety of different printing and binding machinery working in a harmonious rhythm to ensure books keep rolling off the press”, the company says.
The company has trained its own staff in both the safety and technical aspects of the machines they operate. This can include photo charts on the binder say, to describe to the new operator what to do to make a book. Other machines have clear instructions: Do Not Adjust.
This rudimentary level of instruction provoked union leaders in France to complain at plans to open a print on demand site near Paris that such instruction did not result in qualified printers. The French site, which opened at the end of last year, is very much smaller than the UK with just two print lines along with the guillotine, laminating, binding and finishing equipment needed. Prior to this French demand was supplied from the UK. The UK operation is also understood to have helped its Italian colleagues.
The UK blog post follows a year after an Amazon employee posted a video to YouTube showing the Manufacture on Demand operation for books at ORD4 in the US. Here Canon supplied both mono and colour toner printers alongside the high speed inkjet webs. Its plant also included Challenge Titan guillotines and Komfi laminators. The latter are not mentioned in the UK article, though the Titan guillotine is.
The UK is a technically more advanced operation with greater levels of automation. It is able to follow the product from start to finish using scanned QR codes to identify each order and the components of a book thorough the process. The QR codes are applied to tote bins (like security trays in an airport) to identify book block and the cover to match to it. This is similar to the technology that Hunkeler showed at this year’s Innovations Days.
The blog is published at the same time that publishers in the US are complaining, according to Publishers’ Weekly, that Amazon is forcing them to have books printed in Europe, closer to the point of need, rather than shipping from the US.
The complaint is that print on demand results in higher costs and typically restricts production options. An Amazon spokesman is quoted saying that publishers were told of the changes 18 months ago.
