Print Solutions
Sheffield based Northend is the second UK operation to install a Horizon StitchLiner MKIII with the new VAC-L600H tower collators.
The investment was made to streamline production at the newly formed operation created by the merger of Northend Creative Print Solutions (CPS) and My Print Partners (MPP) in April. The merger was completed through De Lisle Holdings which is 50% owned by MPP production director Richard Green and sales director Ian McCloskey and 50% by Northend CPS managing director Nigel Stubley.
The company produces offset work on a quick drying Ryobi 920 LED-UV five colour press and digital print on a Ricoh Pro C9100 and a Ricoh Pro C7100.
‘We took six months after the merger to review operations and see where investment needed to be made,’ explained Richard Green. ‘Our Muller Martini binding line was getting old and taking longer to make ready. The StitchLiner MKIII was the perfect solution. It ran quicker, was faster to set up improving planning and also used a smaller sheet size on magazines resulting in 10% savings on some paper.’
Northend’s 6000 sheets per hour system includes the new high capacity VAC-L600H collators and their 130 mm deep trays. They are more than double the depth of the 55 mm trays on 10 station collators. This equates to 2.3 times less down time for loading and greater uptime. The new collators can handle a wider range of substrates enabling greater flexibility and their intelligent operation allows them to feed digital work that has been printed `in page order’. It also has the option of Ultrasonic detection and a double length delivery stream.
‘When we did the first demos it completed five jobs in a couple of hours, previously one job took three hours on its own. The fact we no longer have to fold sections saves us a lot of time freeing up capacity. It also helps us get the jobs out the door faster,’ said Richard.
Pictured (left to right): Daniel Littlewood, operator, and John Marples, production manager.
