16 March 2018

Investment follows acquisition in Wales

Following the recent acquisition by BPIF members Pensord, based in Blackwood of, Cambrian Printers, the Group have recently announced a deal with IFS to boost trimming efficiency and increase folding throughput by 50% with a dual post-press spend. The deal with IFS sees the installation of a Horizon HT-30 three-side trimmer at the Aberystwyth site and last month, the parent site in Blackwood took delivery of a Stahlfolder TH 82 folder from Heidelberg/Stahl to improve throughput by up to 50% thanks to its PFX feeder technology.

MD, Darren Coxon, said both pieces were in addition to existing equipment – Cambrian runs KBA, Heidelberg and HP kit; Pensord is a Heidelberg house. "This technology will give customers the shortest possible turnaround times but maintain quality and consistency," he explained.

Director Karl Gater said of the trimmer, "We wanted more efficiency in short-run book production. The Horizon joins a Muller Martini binder for short and medium-volume book binding. 80% of work went through the binder and time was lost when setting up Cambrian's existing three-knife trimmer on very short-run work, creating bottlenecks. Now with the Horizon HT-30 we can trim books almost instantly with minimal set up and operator involvement. Short-run production is much more efficient." He added – "The Horizon HT-30 also provides short term back up in the event of breakdowns on our existing trimmer so it will help us ensure we are always able deliver on time."

This kit allowed the team to check every book for trimming quality – essential in the short-run high-pagination market.

Gater added, "The investment was not about financial gains or payback. We wanted efficiency and peace of mind in ensuring business continuity in the event of other equipment failure."

Before investing Cambrian visited IFS open houses and carried out tests on various perfect-bound books in the showroom. The Horizon HT30 three-side trimmer features automated job setups and quick changeovers with the ability to store up to 40 different book jobs in memory and it operates off-line to trim perfect-bound books at speeds up to 500 cycles per hour. A colour touchscreen allows all set-ups to be performed with full automation.

Dawn Reid, BPIF Regional Director for the area added. "We've worked with both sites for a number of years so it's great to see investment across dual sites for this Group following the acquisition last year".

For further information, please see:

http://www.pensord.co.uk/
http://www.cambrian-printers.co.uk/