Manchester Printers brings cutting in-house with Dyss spend

Manchester Printers has brought all of its cutting in-house after investing £100,000 in a Dyss X7-1624C conveyorised digital cutter.

Supplied by AG/CAD and specified with the K-Cut Vision Pro automatic camera registration system, the machine was installed at the firm’s 280sqm Trafford Park premises last month.

The business had previously been outsourcing higher-volume work, while cutting some banners manually in-house, according to managing director Gavin Page.

“We were putting work out and it was taking at least two to three days to get everything back, so this was a time and cost-saving exercise,” he said.

“It has also opened up massive new avenues that we’ve only found out in the few weeks we’ve had it, including show cards, folding boxboard and Dibond.

“We can now leave a 50m roll running overnight on our Mimaki printers, whether its grey back or PVC roller banners, load that on the Dyss when we come in the next morning and let it run and cut out until a new roll is required to go on the end of it.”

He added: “We’ve got two people in the cutting department and that’s freed up one person for several hours a day to do other things in the business. In terms of time saving it’s a no brainer.”

The company also considered alternatives including the Esko Kongsberg X20 and the Dyss X5, as well as options from Mimaki and Summa, but felt that the X7 best suited its requirements.

The new Dyss follows the installation of a Heidelberg Versafire EP digital production system earlier this year while a secondhand Morgana DigiFold creaser-folder has been installed this week.

Late last year the business, which also operates Konica Minolta machinery, also took on a B2 guillotine from Ideal, a Duplo DBM 150 bookletmaker and a Vivid Matrix Omni-Flow deep-pile feeder to serve its Matrix MX-370 laminator.

In December the company acquired Flintshire-based print management firm Berkeley Business Forms (BBF), in a bid to move into the North West and North Wales markets.

Turning over £2.3m between the two, the company employs 20 staff including the addition of a new salesperson last week.

Page added the business is planning to move to premises double the size at Trafford Park within the next year.

“One of the big selling points of the Dyss is that AG/CAD were prepared to move it free of charge within 12 months of installation. That sealed the deal.

“They have been brilliant, very easy to deal with and they had everything that we needed. Training was also excellent; we’ve got nothing but good things to say about them.”