“It’s one of those things, we haven’t invested much on the digital side for a long time, and now all the investments have come at once,” said CMS managing director Mitesh Chouhan.
“What we’re finding is that we’ve got such firepower in production with the second paper wrapper up and running now, the one thing that was holding us back was not being able to produce print fast enough.”
The latest spend is centered on a brace of Xerox’s flagship Nuvera 157 EAs, supplied by Zerographic.
The 157ppm mono engines, which have a duty cycle of up to 4.7m images per month, will both be configured with double feeders and double stackers to maximise productivity.
The pair will replace three older Nuveras and run alongside two Konica Minolta AccurioPress 6136P mono engines that were installed last month.
The 6136Ps will focus on jobs with runs of less than 50k, the Nuveras on runs of 50k to 100k and anything above 100k will be run on the new flash fusion Nipson DigiFlex single engine high-speed mono web press, the arrival of which has been brought forward to this month.
The £280,000 line features the manufacturer’s ‘speed pack’, which is capable of 550 A4ppm, and is being configured with a refurbished Hunkeler UW6 unwind and cross cutting module from Friedheim International.
The Nipson followed the installation of five cut-sheet engines, four from Konica Minolta and a Xerox, last month, a £430,000 spend that itself followed a £180,000 investment in a bespoke, highly flexible Eagle 40 inkjet line from ProMail/MCS to support naked mailings – which arrives this month.
Of the machines installed so far this year, Chouhan said that the two 140 A4ppm Konica Minolta AccurioPress C14000s were “in league of their own, they’re gamechangers”.
To support the reequip, the business is in final negotiations to take out a lease on an additional 700sqm unit on its industrial estate, which it will use for warehousing to free up space in its main 4,300sqm factory.
It hopes to get the keys in August, when it will install racking for around 1,800 pallets.
Around the same time, the company will install a circa £100,000 fully automatic Casepak paper extraction system for its two CMC One paper wrapping lines.
Currently paper trim waste is collected into bags by the respective lines, which Chouhan said typically needed to be emptied every 60 minutes.
“So, the new system vent the waste all through the building into the recycling bay, which means the paper wrappers no longer need to stop.”
The business, which moved to 24-5 working earlier this year (plus 12 hours and Saturdays and Sundays), is now back up to its pre-pandemic staffing levels – with 100 staff on site most days, 80 of which are permanent.
“And if we’re busy, then by the nature of what we do it generally means that others are busy too, which is good news for everyone,” said Chouhan.
He added that volumes across all parts of the business remained really strong, citing the example of paper wrapping, where the business was effectively full into August.
“So before anyone asks, yes I am thinking about putting a third [paper wrapper] in, we’ll see,” he quipped.
