Halstan, an international fourth- generation family printing business with a history in sheet music and now books, has purchased a Canon VarioPrint iX3200 to support its high quality colour book production capabilities.
Founded in 1919, the business is headquartered at Amersham in Buckinghamshire but also has offices in Mainz, Germany, and New York city. Having made its name in sheet music printing, it now also produces a range of books, including educational titles and notebooks.
The company has previously invested in Canon ImagePress and VarioPrint Titan monochrome dry toner presses, and added a VarioPrint i300 cut-sheet colour inkjet in 2019, which is credited with improving efficiency and attracting business from a range of new customers. The addition of the iX3200, launched in April 2020, brings the ability to print on a range of standard offset coated and uncoated and textured media, which will expand the range of products Halstan can offer its customers.
Rupert Smith, CEO of Halstan, commented, ‘We strongly believe in developing partnerships with our customers, and finding the best solutions for them. Canon very much backs this ethos, and truly understands the goals we have as a business. The latest purchase will provide us with the additional capacity we need to grow our offering further. And, the print quality and stock diversity of the new system will take Halstan into new markets – a proposition I’m really excited by.
‘There are constant demands from the market for shorter print runs and quicker turnarounds. This purchase, combined with new investments in our bindery, mean that we will be able to produce the highest quality colour perfect bound, thread-sewn, ota-bound and saddle-wired products in short runs. This will all be driven by automated workflow solutions, which can be linked through to our client’s own ordering systems. This is not only helping them to de-stock, but also to generate efficiencies through the automation of print purchasing operations.’
