Finishing & Screen Printing
Worksop printer bolsters its saddle-stitching capacity
Tuesday 02. March 2010 - The Bayliss Printing Company has made a move into section saddle-stitching with a Stitchmaster ST 400 supplied by Heidelberg.
The company has used a Thiessen + Bonitz flat sheet stitcher but wanted to extend its in-house service cutting out an outwork cost but, more importantly, shaving time off each job and eliminating the logistics organisation.
It took a year of research before the Worksop company made a final decision on the make and model.
“We looked extensively but came down in favour of the ST 400 because of the amount of usable automation, the fact it could be operated by existing staff staff and because Heidelberg service is superior to that of any other supplier we deal with,” says director Alan Johnson. “Their spare parts arrive almost invariably next day and they have such a spread of service engineers they respond very quickly. With other companies its not unusual to wait a week for spares and two days for an engineer – and downtime is expensive.”
One customer has already committed to having 1 million saddle stitched books a year and is flexible about when these are delivered, giving Bayliss Printing ideal flexibility. It is confident this saddle-stitching service will bring in new work and only this week it handled a 27,000 run 12pp A4 saddle-stitched product. This is typical of its work although runs can extend to 40,000 or 50,000.
Initially the saddle stitcher will run single day shifts but will eventually marry up with the extended days that the pressroom runs. The configuration – five feeders plus cover – was determined by the factory capacity. The company moved to a 7,500 sq ft plant five years ago and already production space is tight.
Bayliss Printing is a 57 year old company which offers general commercial print and short run magazines. The printing side has a turnover of close to £1m. With a managed wire binding company adjacent to the print production unit, it employs a total of 22 staff who Mr Johnson describes as “dedicated and flexible”.