North Yorkshire County Council has increased its print room’s booklet-making capacity, installing a Duplo 600i in place of a pre-existing 3500 bookletmaker.

With the pandemic in full swing, the council found itself needing to increase its capacity in order to maintain proper communications with the public and aid its NHS contracts.

‘The new 600i Booklet System adds many new features to an already impressive booklet system,’ explained John Metcalfe, head of the Print Unit at North Yorkshire County Council. ‘This includes stitching and trimming both thicker and thinner substrates for both the covers and pages across all 20 bins and that increases the variety of stocks that we can handle. It is also considerably faster and much more automated with a new intuitive PC control unit. This allows operators to change jobs much faster with less down time and minimal hands-on adjustments.

‘The new PC control also allows us to programme in more jobs and keep them in the memory, recalling any particular job is simply a click away. On some of our jobs we’ve been able to almost triple the speed of the older machine. The new system has allowed us to fulfil our orders, which are often vital such as the Infection Control booklets for the NHS. It will mean we will be more competitive due to the increased speed of production and allow us to produce A4 landscape booklets which our designers have been longing for!

‘We needed a replacement booklet system because of our tight deadlines and turn around times, with the new intuitive PC control, we will be able to turn around work much faster than before, it was also in the right price point for us so choosing to stay with Duplo was simply a smart decision. We especially love the large touch screen control as it allows ease of use, the programming and clearly shows where any faults are, should they occur.’

The Duplo 600i has already been installed in the council’s print room, located inside the County Hall in Northallerton. Alan Brownley, regional sales manager for Duplo concluded, ‘I knew what John wanted out of his trade in and we had a fantastic deal to be done – it’s always great dealing with someone who knows the kit and knows exactly what they want. It was also great knowing that we were helping out an organisation directly responsible for helping our region get back on track.’