Flexpress has taken delivery of the what is only the second Horizon BQ500 perfect binder in the UK. It completes a lockdown investment programme for the Leicester business that has increased its ability to produce books to include casebound as well as softback editions.
And after a year of uncertainty when the pandemic left its carefully calculated growth strategy in tatters, the company is looking forward with confidence. “When the pandemic started we saw that one of the sectors that was surviving best was books, so have make books part of the strategy moving forwards,” says managing director Steve Wenlock. “Now we are able to say that we are book specialists to the trade.”
That led to putting in case binding from cover production, to casing in and a dedicated three-knife trimmer late last year and capped last week with delivery of Horizon’s latest perfect binder. The intention is to be able to produce short runs of books, printed either on its HP Indigo 12000 or the SRA1 RMGT 920 when digital becomes too expensive.
The BQ500 will produce the blocks for case binding as well as the complete soft cover books. An order Wenlock explains might have 80% of the run finished in this way with 20% requiring case binding. Now Flexpress can produce the complete job.
The Schmedt casing in and pressing machines and Horauf trimmer were supplied by Perfect Bindery Solutions, where managing director Steve Giddins helped Flexpress get to grips with what it was doing. “It was still a big learning curve for us,” says Wenlock. “I hadn’t realised there were so many different glues involved in case binding.
“We had had some really basic kit before which was quite easy to use, but incredibly slow, so knew we had to gear the kit up.”
The round of investment ties in with earlier spends on a Duplo DuSense and foiling which can deliver the embellishment required for covers and jackets. “So we just needed the investment in case binding kit to be fully set up. Now we are doing some nice stuff, and we can feel proud of the product at the end of each day,” he adds. “We want to be the one-stop shop for book production and we are finding that there’s quite a nice demand for relatively short run books.”
The BQ500 installation follows that at CPI Books-Wiley which is part of a highly automated production set up. A further couple of UK installations are planned for the coming weeks, says IFS technical sales director Jason Seaber. “It is the latest generation machine from Horizon, with IceLink cloud hosted job and production data and API links for connectivity into a production workflow.”
Horizon offers modules around the core functionality of the binder, including end paper and gauze application for case binding. Flexpress has not yet invested in these, but can do so when demand justifies the extra investment. “It is a machine designed for automation and for use by a relatively low skilled operator,” says Seaber.
