Finishing is on my mind at the moment, not least because here at PrintWeek Towers we've been beavering away on our Finishing Report, which will be published with this week's issue.

The subject made me think about a recent conversation with a contact who is the owner of a very nice perfect binding line. My chum has found himself on the end of various requests for binding, including one from AN Web Offset Printer who was terribly keen to book up all available perfect binding capacity for some months to come. Right up until Christmas, in fact.

This is surely not unconnected to the decision by the owners of Andrews Finishing to wind down the business back in June, due to it becoming unviable to operate a trade facility in that high-volume space. This has effectively removed some ?4m of 24/7 finishing capacity from the market.

Elsewhere jobs seem to be moving around due to a lack of bindery options in one place or another.

This anecdotal evidence indicates to me that anyone planning perfect bound products in particular, and who doesn't already have a schedule commitment (actually, even if you do have commitment, would be good to double-check it) will likely find that an absence of binding capacity is going to make placing this type of job a sticky process, to say the least, during the upcoming peak period.