Poplar Services Printers has invested in a Horizon SPF-200L bookletmaker and two VAC 1000 10 station collators from Intelligent Finishing Systems (IFS).
Established in 1986 as a B2 litho company, St Helens-based Poplar switched to digital production five years ago. Today the company, which prints on a Ricoh Pro C9110, specialises in retail and point of sale and offers trade printing as a white label service.
The company opted for the 4500bph Horizon SPF-200L after being impressed by its ability to combine stitching and folding as well as handle sheets up to 640mm in length. Poplar also valued the ability to instantly set-up via a large icon-based colour touchscreen and the storage of up to 200 jobs.
‘We invested in a stitch fold trim line when we went completely digital but it became clear we needed something faster that enabled us to be more flexible,’ said managing director Martin Winders. ‘We wanted to produce landscape and smaller-sized booklets quickly and easily inhouse. We also needed something that could smoothly handle laminated booklets.
‘Investing in the new system means we can complete more work in a faster timescale. For example when we were hand finishing landscape books we could work at about 100-150 per hour. Now that figure is around 3000. We had one job recently that would have taken seven hours before, this time it took just 30 minutes.’
The bookletmaker will join a Horizon BQ-270 single clamp perfect binder, Horizon AFC-546 folder and a Foliant Vega 400 laminator at Poplar’s headquarters.
