Horizon is shipping more than 450 pieces of production equipment from Japan to Dusseldorf, aiming to arrive well ahead of Drupa. While most of the equipment is destined for its own stand in Hall 6, at least nine other companies will have Horizon equipment to show.
At one point Hunkeler could be guaranteed to be one of these partners, but now Hunkeler is part of the Muller Martini group and Horizon is increasingly a competitor at least in short run book production.
Both companies will have integrated lines in operation. Horizon will show book block production from an inkjet reel to cut and stack of blocks and loading into a perfect binder with inline three-knife trimming.
Likewise Muller Martini will include automated book production as part of its Hall 1 presence. There will be four lines in operation. One is likely to be the set up shown at a recent open house where the latest Sigmaline Compact fed into the 2,000cph Antaro perfect binder and Infinitrim three-knife trimmer. Muller Martini will also have Hunkeler equipment on the stand while Hunkeler is likely to reciprocate though has not yet made any announcements.
Tecnau likewise will have products on its own stand in Hall 8A and will be providing technology to a number of partners. This is understood to include Fujifilm for the continuous feed inkjet press that is being launched at the show.
And Italian company Meccanotecnica is also aiming at this space with the launch of Sirio, its first perfect binder, which can run inline to one of the company’s own sewing machines or a book block line. This will be in Hall 1 close to Muller Martini.
Bruno Müller says that integration between separate process steps is essential. “The decisive factor for the success of a new system is the entire process and not primarily the selected printing technology. Small production volumes are also possible in offset printing.
“Therefore, the economically viable production of short runs does not necessarily require digital printing presses, but above all an end to end process from prepress to dispatch.”
Horizon is also heading in this direction with robots used to replace manual labour for mundane tasks. It is promising a new perfect binder and new booklet maker as well as showing the book block line, MkIV and MkV Stitchliners and its Cabs compact gathering line.
