Supplied by KAS Paper Systems and installed in August, the machine has joined two Ricoh colour printers, several Kyocera multifunction printers, an HP large-format plotter, a Polar guillotine, a Stahl folder, a Citoborma drill, and an FSN numbering machine.
“The department has only ever run KAS inserters, the first two being purchased when the Community Charge or Poll Tax was introduced in 1990,” said Simon Hime, manager of the document centre and mailroom.
“With the outsourcing of what later became the council tax mailing by Capita, who were by now running the department, only one inserter was required, so we replaced the two KAS inserters with their DL to C5 Mailmaster 565 in 2001.”
“Although the Mailmaster 565 was still running well after more than 20 years, it was starting to show its age at times, and it couldn’t insert into C4 envelopes,” Hime added.
“So when KAS offered a showroom demonstration of their Mailmaster Compact, which can do C4 as well as C5 and DL, we jumped at the opportunity, bringing our own letters and envelopes to test on the machine. Following a successful demonstration, the machine was ordered and delivered in late summer this year.”
Hime said installation only took a couple of hours, while the KAS engineer also returned after a few weeks, to check how the team was getting on with the device and to train some additional machine operators.
“As well as now being able to insert C4 envelopes, the Compact eats up, with changeovers in minutes, our multiple, short-run jobs, including pre-folded A1-size planning applications, stapled sets and thicker books up to 7mm, often at up to the maximum speed of 6,000 envelopes per hour.”
In the future, Hime said the business may look at retrofitting a KAS letter feeder with code reading “if we do more elections work such as the ITR (Invitation to Register) or if we start hybrid mailings”.
The KAS Mailmaster encloses up to 6,000 envelopes per hour. As well as the letter, which can be folded inline once or twice for inserting into C5 or DL, or fed flat for inserting into C4, the Compact can feed two other separate documents, such as single-page flat or pre-folded flyers, reply envelopes, and stitched booklets up to 7mm thick.
LBB’s document centre and mailroom employs 14 full time staff.
