The 90-staff outfit, which predominantly offers litho printing services, invested in a Duplo iSaddle Digital System and a Duplo DC-746 slitter-cutter-creaser, alongside the bookletmaker.
The systems were installed last week at Lonsdale’s Wellingborough, Northamptonshire premises. The company already runs two Duplo Digital System 5000 bookletmakers, both of which will remain in operation.
“We’ve been with Duplo before and know their bookletmakers and this is just an upgrade from that really. For the type of work we are winning we needed to upgrade from a bookletmaker to a stitcher and the iSaddle obviously ticked that box,” said Lonsdale managing director Gary Kiernan.
“There are three or four suppliers to go to and we looked at all of them, but when we did analysis we realised this was the best route for us. We’ve had some great service from Duplo over the years and this was a logical step for us.”
Kiernan added that the two systems would allow Lonsdale to keep far more of its work in-house.
“The companies out there who are finishing for us are few and far between now so the more you can keep in-house the better,” he said.
The iSaddle is a sheetfed saddle-stitching system, combing the DSF-2200 sheet feeder with a saddle stitcher. It handles paper sizes up to 355x508mm, at up to 200spm, and comes with an optional DKT-200 two-knife trimmer. It can score and plough-fold subsets of up to 10 sheets and saddle-stitch and trim up to 30-sheet booklets.
The DC-746 can be used on all manner of print applications and perform up to 10 slits, 25 cuts and 20 creases in a single pass. It comes with Duplo’s Job Creator software, which allows the operator to create PDF templates.
Lonsdale is likely to be upgrading and adding to more of its kit roster in 2017. It runs two Heidelberg Speedmaster XL 75s for litho and a Xerox iGen for digital work.
Last May, it acquired the Surrey-based nine-staff outfit Calderstone Design & Print, which Kiernan said had given it a “southern base”.
To celebrate its 100th year, it has initiated a ‘100 things for 100 years’ campaign. It has so far cooked 100 meals for the homeless in Wellingborough, donated 100 reams of paper to a local school and completed 100 miles between its workforce at the Tough Mudder mud run challenge to raise money for a local children’s charity.
