Integrity expands offering with new kit

Integrity Print is making a major £1m-plus investment in new equipment to enhance label and transactional print production at its Midsomer Norton site.

The firm has just installed a Pitney Bowes APS camera controlled inserting line at the facility. The line features full production audit trails and can handle 18,000 C5 envelopes per hour, or 20,000 in DL format.

Also bound for its transactional printing setup is a twin-engined Xerox 650 continuous laser printer.

This joins an existing line-up of Xerox and Océ continuous kit, as well as cut-sheet colour and mono high-volume printers.

The new Xerox line can output a duplex stream or two simplex feeds, and features non-contact flash fusing.

“We produce a lot of integrated card products with peelable labels, and cold fusion is the best way to do it,” explained commercial manager Andrew Law.

The 18-acre Midsomer Norton site has three production units, and Integrity’s label printing capability is also set to be expanded with the addition of an Edale FL-3 flexo press over the summer.

The new eight-colour press can print conventional flexo or UV. It has fast makeready times, with job changeovers possible in just 70 seconds, and can handle substrates from 12-450microns.

Label sales manager Dave Meredith said: “We will be able to offer our customers a lot more options. Demand for self-cling and filmic labels is growing, and the FL-3 allows us to print onto a really good range of substrates, including thin film packaging.”

It joins Integrity’s existing label printing line-up that includes a Gallus Arsoma, Focus Machinery Webflex and Rotapress kit.

Integrity Print is part of the same group as A1 Trade Print in Birmingham and Mooreforms in Ebbw Vale, owned by parent company MCAARP Holdings.

Group managing director Mark Cornford said he was adapting the business as demand reduces in some of its markets, including pre-printed base stationery and business forms.

“We have to diversify, and the acquisition of A1 has done that in security print and in our export business,” he said. “Now I want to move things forward on the labels and transactional side where we see big opportunities, hence these investments.”

It has invested around £1.25m in total in the new equipment.

Cornford said he continued to look at further potential acquisitions for the group, which had sales of around £59m last year.