Installed in February, the high-productivity folder adds to the Belfast-based publication specialist's kit. According to managing director Derek Bell, it offers his firm anywhere from a 50% to 100% increase in productivity compared with the other folders it runs.
After moving premises two years ago, GPS saw its floorspace leap from 2,320sqm to 11,610sqm in a £5m investment. With the added “elbow room”, Bell hopes to see further upgrades to the commercial printer’s tech in the near future.
He said: “We have plenty of folders onsite but none of them are particularly good at this concertina fold that we wanted for both saddle-stitched and perfect-bound magazines.
“There was not really any other viable option in the market than a Stahlfolder which can work just as fast as our other machines at a lower roller speed.
“With its introduction, we were looking to increase our efficiency and it’s safe to say that the same will likely go for our printing soon enough.”
Heidelberg’s Stahlfolder TH 82-P is an industrial machine which runs portrait feeding and underlapped shingle method to produce traditional format sections. With 16-page A4 sections, up to 16,400 copies can be produced per hour at a speed of 140m/min.
It will deal with application ranging from book sections to leaflets.
GPS also runs two more Stahlfolders, a CH 56 and a KH 66, alongside a number of MBO T960 machines in its folding portfolio. Its printing kit includes one 10-colour and two eight-colour B1 Komoris.
85-staff GPS Colour Graphics turns over £8m.
