Manor Group upgrades digital finishing with Duplo spend

Eastbourne-based litho and digital printer Manor Group has invested £80,000 in a new DC-745 intelligent finishing system from Duplo as a replacement for its existing DC-445.

The DC-745 was installed in the firm's digital department last month following a trip to Duplo's demo facility earlier this year in search of a faster score-fold-crease machine.

Manor Group installed its original DC-445 in 2009 at the same time as its iGen 4 press, which it upgraded in 2012 to take a larger SRA3 sheet, enabling it to print 6-up A4 portrait or 4-up A4 landscape.

Managing director Paul Denne said: "The DC-445 only scores and folds, so as demand rose for things like 6pp A4 booklets we needed a faster means of scoring, folding and creasing. The DC-745 will slit head and foot and also do gutter slits, micro-perf, score and rotary cutting.

"One of the big advantages is when we're producing business cards 21-up on an SRA3 sheet where, rather than using a guillotine that would probably take about 10 minutes, we can cut 250 business cards on the DC-745 in less than a minute.

"Also, on a guillotine, things like A6 postcards, which we would print 8-up, if you were using gutters as well, would take eight cuts to get down to A6. With the DC-745, it's one pass and they all end up in the delivery."

Manor Group also runs a DBM120 stitcher from Duplo, which Denne said it could look to upgrade in future.