With the first book produced last Wednesday (27 September), the machine arrived in CPI’s Melksham, Wiltshire premises in early September, with a similarly specified line installed in CPI’s German subsidiary Buchbucher around a month prior. The line is Antony Rowe's fourth from Kolbus, complementing two Kolbus casing-in lines.
Intended for short-run book jobs, the line comprises a Kolbus KM 200 binder running inline with the UK’s first HD-HD 143 three-knife trimmer, along with a KL 501 compensating stacker. Glued blocks are fed into the perfect binder before entering a set of cooling conveyors, followed by the trimmer, the stacker and finally a packing and wrapping machine.
CPI divisional general manager Martin Collyer said: “We have enjoyed a long-standing partnership with Kolbus UK and these latest machines are exactly what we were looking for.
“They are perfect for both our very short-run products and longer-run output. In particular, the speed of makeready capability ensures that we’ll continue to be able to fulfil customer needs well into the future.”
Kolbus UK managing director Robert Flather said the install represented the culmination of a 30-year relationship between CPI and the Germany-headquartered manufacturer.
“When CPI was formed by Antony Rowe all those years ago, they were always trailblazers with new technology and in particular recognised the need for the ability to produce short run lengths at the right price,” said Flather.
“They’ve always been leaders in technology and are not frightened of doing something new.”
Integrating automatically with CPI’s in-house workflow, the line is one of only three to be installed in the UK, two of which are with CPI, and is part of an install base of between 30 to 40 global installations since the KM 200 was launched in 2011.
Running at speeds of up to 5,000 copies per hour and ideal for feeding book blocks or stacks of loose sheets, the perfect binder is intended for both short- and long-run jobs and switches between hardback and paperback production almost instantly, leading to makereadies of almost zero.
Launched last Drupa, the trimmer, which can reach 8,000 products per hour in standard production format mode, has automatic 3D format adjustment, which eliminates the need to change the pressing block. It has an adjustable double cutting station, with the first station cutting the foredge and the second cutting the head and tail.
Flather added: “The main appeal is that the machine is rated far faster than any of its ilk in the marketplace. The rated speed of the binder and trimmer is 5,000 products per hour and you can process digital products at that speed if they are all exactly the same."
CPI Antony Rowe has two other UK factories and the group has eight sites UK-wide, which includes its CPI Books, CPI William Clowes and CPI Colour offerings. The 2,800-staff group operates across seven countries.
