Midland invests £250k to bring lamination in-house

Midland Regional Printers (MRP) will bring laminating services in-house later this year after investing £250,000 in new kit from Swedish manufacturer Lamina System.

The Nottingham-based business is set to take delivery of a Lamina FA Blackline 1600/800 automated laminator in October, at which point operators will undergo two weeks' training on the machine.

The device will be additional to the company's portfolio – it currently outsources all lamination work.

“We're putting a lot of mounting out at the moment and we're looking at bringing these services in-house,” said sales and marketing director Kate Tew.

“We started to look into the types of machine that suited what we wanted to do and Lamina were recommended to us.

“While we've got space for the laminator, we need to clear some space for all the material that it's going to take, so we're in the process of moving things around to try and make way for it at the moment.”

Running at a top speed of 5,000sph, the Lamina machine takes sheets up to 450gsm at a maximum size of 1.6x2m. It has edge-to-edge registration accuracy up to 0.2mm and automatic feeding for both its top and bottom feeder.

Midland Regional Printers has 65 staff and is on target to turn over £6m this year. Serving the vaping, beauty and pharmaceutical markets among others, it currently carries out the litho and digital printing of labels and packaging in-house, as well as other finishing processes including gluing and stitching.

Last year the business embarked on a major investment programme that saw it purchase a six-colour Heidelberg Speedmaster XL 106, an Easymatrix 106 die-cutter and a BGM Elite die-cutter slitter rewinder. It also refreshed its MIS setup after investing in an Imprint system.