CPI Antony Rowe boosts quality of output with Watkiss spend

The offline PowerSquare was installed in May this year because the company's previous machine "didn't do justice" to the quality of CPI's output, according to general manager Martin Collyer.

He said: "We weren't happy with the quality of the finish and fold – it was too floppy. We addressed this with the Watkiss. We wanted something that looks like it has been done on a wire-stitching line."

He added that the speed of the machine was comparable with its predecessor, although with average run lengths of 1.4 copies, speed was not the most important factor.

The machine is able to produce squareback books, which Collyer explained is beneficial to the company because many of its customers preferred them for stacking purposes.

"In these times publishers are producing less, they don't want to print lots and store it and are turning to short runs and print-on-demand more. We have seen a growth in work in Eastbourne and I am sure our Chippenham site would say the same," he added.

The company prints for a wide variety of specialist publishers producing books, journals, dictionaries, directories, yearbooks, reference books, indexes, guidebooks, legal books and looseleaf publications.