Charlesworth Press, a Wakefield-based company which produces personalised children’s books, has invested in an endsheet feeder, Vareo perfect binder and InfiniTrim three-knife trimmer from Muller Martini.
The company, which produces work on a fleet of three HP Indigo presses, started out as a conventional offset printing plant for books and magazines, but entered the digital space seven years ago. Using its website children or their parents can design books themselves and create their own story with first names, surnames, and personalised dedications. ‘If a child opens the book and sees his or her name there, of course it’s a special experience,’ said Charlesworth’s operations director, Lee Hewitt.
Speaking to Digital Printer, Mr Hewitt commented on the Muller equipment, ‘What swung it was the inline end-papering, which no one else had, plus the InfiniTrim inline, which allows us to add on additional binders, up to a total of four’.
Mr Hewitt went on to say that investing in the Muller Martini equipment would allow Charlesworth to, ‘Kill six birds with one stone. First, our workflow will be significantly improved because manual interventions will become virtually redundant. Second, barcodes will ensure that the cover and content always match. Third, we’ll now be able to offer our customers a much wider range of sizes. Fourth, the quality of the end products will be enhanced thanks to the high trim quality of the InfiniTrim. Fifth, we’ll be able to produce both softcover and hardcover books using the same system. Sixth, it’s not only an ideal solution for books in runs of one copy, like our personalised children’s books, but also for jobs with higher run sizes.’
The personalised nature of the work it produces naturally means that Charlesworth Press specialises in print runs of only a single copy. However it also produces up to 10,000 copies per title in the hardcover segment and up to 15,000 copies per title in the softcover segment. Its new equipment can manage that with ease thanks to its high flexibility in terms of both hybrid production and run sizes. Mr Hewitt says that in the future the company will be able to produce over 35,000 personalised books per day, compared to 2500 previously. This could include folded litho printed sections as well as digitally-printed pages.
