Finishing & Screen Printing

Joubert Imprimeurs, Nice: The Primera C130 Works Up a Sweat Over the Summer

Tuesday 05. March 2013 - Joubert Imprimeurs, which specializes in school booklets for collèges, has chalked up a daily record of 41 different jobs. The Primera C130 saddle stitcher at the family business in the city of Nice in Southern France is put through its paces during the summer.

July and August are the traditional vacation months at the Côte d’Azur. But while ten thousands of tourists are enjoying their summer at the French Riviera, Yvain Joubert and Nicolas Joubert are doing anything but relax at the beach. The printing presses and print finishing systems at Joubert Imprimeurs run by the two brothers operate at full speed at the height of summer. The family business, which was founded by their father Bernard Joubert in 1980, is one of the few in France specializing for 15 years now in a product delivered shortly before the start of the new school year.
Joubert Imprimeurs produces school booklets for some 1,100 collèges across France. They contain regulations, information for students, class schedules and slips with which teachers can inform parents about the behavior of their offspring or students can register sick days and exemption requests. The production of the school booklets, which are mostly printed in A5plus format and have an annual total print run of over a million copies, is complex. It involves multicolor printing, perforations and in many cases plastic covers – a challenge in terms of both printing and print finishing.
In addition, the average print run per school booklet, with four staples for optimal resistance, is 880 copies, which means Joubert Imprimeurs has to change over its saddle stitcher correspondingly frequently. The printing house’s daily record is 41 different jobs.
Before: 8 People in 3 Shifts – After: 5 People in 1 Shift
After using a model from another manufacturer for 30 years, in spring 2011 the company invested in a Primera C130 saddle stitcher from Muller Martini with six flat pile feeders, a cover feeder, an Apollo compensating stacker and a large screen with a reverse display. According to Yvain Joubert, who operates the Primera himself together with a second machine operator, the results are astonishing in terms of both productivity and quality.
“Before commissioning the Primera, we needed to have eight people working in three shifts at the saddle stitcher during the peak times in August. Now, although the volume concerned is slightly higher, we need only five people working in one shift. With the old saddle stitcher we received ten error reports from our customers for every 800 copies. With the new saddle stitcher not a single error report has been made so far.”
Joubert, whose father, grandfather and great grandfather all worked in the printing business, is particularly taken with Asir 3: “To us reliable signature control is extremely important in view of the many titles involved and the high production speed.”
In August, when the printing house engages six temporary workers in addition to its 24 permanent employees, Joubert Imprimeurs’ turnover from the school booklets alone is three times as high as its turnover in a normal month. As the height of summer the company only prints other products in exceptional cases. Outside the peak months in summer, Joubert Imprimeurs produces brochures, pamphlets, flyers, and documents for authorities and calendars and packing slips for pharmaceutical products for its mainly regional customers. The print runs for these products are between 300 and 400,000 copies, with an average of 5,000 copies.
The high degree of automation of the new saddle stitcher is also an advantage for such products. “To tell the truth, the Primera is almost somewhat excessive for such production. But for our peak times we need a high-performance machine and we couldn’t manage without the Primera because of delivery deadlines down to the exact day.”