Clays will be producing a greater proportion of its covers in house following installation of a Petratto Cordoba folder gluer.
The machine can deliver a creased, folded and glued two-up cover to match production of book blocks at the Bungay factory. Paul Bullen, Clays general manager, says: “We needed a system that could fold and glue two-up. We were outsourcing the work but our suppliers could only produce one-up. Two-up is much more efficient and we wanted to start completing more jobs that way.”
The investment had originally been considered five years ago, but was sidelined until the £23.8 million take over by Elcograf in 2018. The unit will deliver greater productivity, helping production become more cost effective.
The Petratto Cordoba has a creasing section before the folding plates. A matrix system is used for creating along and across the sheet, which enables it to cope with substrates from 80gsm to 600gsm, including laminated covers.
“We liked the fact that it easily manages short runs, from 100 to 100,000. The best thing about it is its fast change over. Other systems glue and plough fold and that can take up to an hour to change jobs on. This is much faster,” says Bullen.
Digital is increasing in importance for the Suffolk book printer. It took delivery of an HP PageWide T490 towards the end of last year, able to deliver two streams of book blocks. It is the company’s third HP inkjet press and is helping make inkjet printing of books a mainstream technology.
Gareth Ward
Paul Bullen, Clays general manager, accepts the completion of the Petratto installation from Diego Casagrande, Petratto’s sales and product manager. The installation was handled by Petratto’s UK agent IFS.
Digital is increasing in importance for Clays. It invested in an HP PageWide T490 towards the end of last year, able to deliver two streams of book blocks. It is the Suffolk book printer’s third HP inkjet press and is helping to make inkjet printing of books a mainstream technology.
