AB Print Group is the model for many a modern print business with B2 litho, small format digital, large format digital and the spread of finishing equipment to keep margins in house and to keep control over a job.
“We try to put out as little work as possible, so we have invested in folders, in guillotines and laminating in order to be as much of a one-stop as we can,” says director Richard Walmesley.
The spread of technologies enables the Batley company to cross sell large format to litho customers, brochures to business card buyers and point of sale to those interested in scratch cards. It is also the programme printer for Halifax Town, demanding a fast turnaround on a good looking product.
While the print business can offer the complete range of services, within the walls of the factory it needs to specialise; digital work travels along one path, litho on another.
This is most obvious at finishing where the company’s traditional Muller Martini stitcher is complemented by a Watkiss PowerSquare 200 booklet maker which delivers a squared spine.
“Everything for the Muller has to be pre-folded into sections. The Watkiss works from pre-collated flat sheet sets,” says Walmesley. “The Watkiss automates the process completely.”
Equally there is none of the set up waste associated with the traditional path. While on a litho job, a number of wasted sections is perhaps bearable.
“We can afford to lose, say, 200 overs as we adjust the Muller Martini finishing line – but you can’t have 200 overs on a 200 run. We need dedicated digital finishing, and it needs to be fast, accurate and highly automated,” he says.
The SquareBack binding both delivers a higher quality product and one which avoids the problem that many using booklet makers have encountered.
Walmesley remembers the reasoning which led to the Watkiss: “Obviously when you print collated sets you just want to run them through a booklet maker which folds and stitches, which is fine, until you hit around the 60 page mark.
“We print and finish football programmes for Halifax Town Football Club, which are always around 60 pages. Traditionally stitched books would gape open, which is not an attractive finish.
“We would get last minute calls from the client to say they had sold more advertising – and could they have four more pages? I would think to myself, sure, if you want it on tissue paper!
“With such tight deadlines there was no way we could take the perfect binding route, which also added too much to the cost. So, the need was clear for a booklet making solution which would give a professional finish for documents of 60-plus pages.
“Anything that is above 28pp we will automatically finish with a SquareBack, because with traditional booklet makers there is not a proper fold and they will gape.”
At the other extreme AB Print’s Watkiss will deliver a 10mm book, around 160pp. For this Walmesley will alert customers that page files need to compensate for the fold, but within the trim area there is no page to page difference for a customer to spot.
Currently the unit is hand fed, but perhaps not for long. Walmesley is looking at adding further modules to automate the process completely, feeding into a trimmer.
At the time of installation it was just as easy and as quick to hand feed he explains. Now volumes have built to the point that an automated feeder is easier to justify. Likewise for a two-knife trimmer and stacker, which can be retro fitted.
The deliberations about this next step go on. Walmesley is clear on one point: “We love the Watkiss to bits.”
“Everything for the Muller has to be pre-folded into sections. The Watkiss works from pre-collated flat sheet sets,” says AB Print Group’s Richard Walmesley. “The Watkiss automates the process completely.”
