The finisher installed the custom-built machine at its Leicester premises in early August and it is currently in the commissioning phase. The machine, which was acquired secondhand from a UK dealer, comprises of two Bograma BS Multi 750 Servo punching machines, one MBO T700 folder, a stitching unit, a cover feeding unit and a pressing unit. 

Operations director Alan Pickles said the outfit could “offer something more” with the new configuration. It already runs two other Bograma inline stitchers but this is the first that will allow it to take A4 and A5, although it will still be able to process smaller items, its main source of output.

Pickles said: “It lends itself to volume work of standard format, which is something we don’t currently offer. It’s admittedly a diminishing market but there are less finishers around these days so it made sense."

The business is now aiming to move beyond A4 brochures and into A4 and A5 die-cut booklets, which it can deliver in a single pass, and is considering investing in further folding equipment later in the year, although it already runs more than 30 folding machines.

“We do get asked for standard size and we tend to shy away from it because most printers can do it themselves and most finishers that are doing it are not exactly buoyant but it’s something that complements our existing equipment and we can obviously adapt it to do miniature work, which is 99%,” added Pickles. 

32-staff Clinical gets 80% of its work from commercial printers and the remaining 20% from pharmaceutical packaging firms, producing lightweight multi-fold patient information leaflets. 

The 42-year-old business runs 30 H&H machines for miniature work, which Clinical carried out a roller replacement programme for last year, a Horizon folder installed earlier this year, four z-fold card lines, five stitching lines, mailing lines for attaching items such as sachets and cards, two spine-glue booklet lines and two ram punches.