Micropress invests in UK’s first Tecnau BookReady

Print Solutions Finishing Solutions

Leading UK magazine and book printer Micropress has ordered the UK’s first Tecnau BookReady B3 dynamic cut and stack solution. The deal was signed at drupa 2024.

The Suffolk business specialises in solutions for publishing, direct mail, and advertising media such as brochures and leaflets. It works with a range of clients including print managers, other printers, and end users producing books, catalogues, magazines and other commercial print work. It also offers warehousing and pick and pack services as part of a strategy to continually enhance its offering.

It has invested in the Tecnau BookReady to run in line with its first digital inkjet press, a Canon varioPrint iX3200.

The latest investment follows a £3.5 million spend at the start of the year to support a broadening of Micropress’s offering. At the time it purchased the Canon IX3200 inkjet press, an additional automated TH 82-P Stahlfolder, and a Horizon CABS4000V 9-clamp PUR high speed binding system, that significantly increases short run binding capacity. Micropress also added extra operating space by extending its existing site to join the paper warehouse and main factory together.

Rob Cross, joint managing director, explained: ‘As a business we are on a continual automation drive and always looking to push the boundaries in becoming more efficient. This investment ticks that box nicely. We first saw it at an IFS and Tecnau open event in May last year. We did look at alternatives on the market, but we really liked the simplicity of the BookReady and the automation it offered. It is also already set up to go on the back of a Canon iX so we don’t need to complete a collaborating exercise as this has already been done. It should be an out of the box solution.’

The Tecnau BookReady is a completely automated system for short run and book on-demand production that runs in line to the Canon varioPrint iX-series (and also available for the Canon varioPrint 6000 series Titan). It slits, cuts and stacks up to B3 size sheets printed in 2-up and 4-up imposition into final size separated book blocks such as A4+ and A5+ ready for near line book binding. Applications can be changed on the fly without any manual intervention at full printing speed as the Tecnau BookReady is fully integrated with the Canon Prismasync Controller in the iX3200, so all jobs are automatically set up on-demand and with no manual intervention.

Rob added, ‘Since installing our Canon iX3200 press at the start of the year we have increased the output in our short run division significantly which in turn has created a bottleneck in cutting within this area of the business. This investment will completely relieve that bottleneck. But, what I like about it, is that we are relieving it through automation as opposed to weighting more resource at it.’

He continued, ‘We do a lot of short run PUR bound work and this machine will cut the sheets in line to create book blocks before they are then fed into our new Horizon CABS4000V binding line. It saves the whole process of cutting them off line which we currently need to do.’