Kentec speeds up with KAS

Hall with the new Mailmaster
Hall with the new Mailmaster

Kentec Mail & Courier Service has speeded up production with a new Mailmaster envelope inserter, the firm’s third system from KAS.

The Tunbridge Wells firm provides a range of printing, mailing and courier services, with a specialty in international shipments.

Production manager Nick Hall said the business was continuing to operate amid the situation caused by Covid-19, and was fully operational at present.

Kentec has installed a KAS 465HS for handling C4, C5 and DL insertion. The new system replaces a Mailmaster 465 that had seen 14 years of service at the business, and is twice as fast on C4 jobs.

Nick Hall said the company had stuck with KAS due to the manufacturer’s known reliability and service provision.

“It takes about ten minutes to set up and can run a variety of stock up to 120gsm. Documents just fly through at up 6,000 completed envelopes an hour. We have a few jobs that require document matching which we do by hand. For example, we send out at a regular eighteen-page Council newsletter in a C4 envelope together with a personal letter and rent statement which we match by hand and a document about service charges,” he said.

Kentec handles a wide range of jobs from simple newsletters to million-run mailings and jobs with multiple inserts.

As well as being faster in operation, the KAS 465HS is also quicker to set up, with more on-screen options. 

“Although most of our jobs are inserted into C5 envelopes because of the economy of postage, we do have regular C4 work. The KAS 465HS gives us the flexibility to use both formats,” Hall said.

“We have a really good rapport with our customers. Most of our work is planned in advance but this machine will give us the extra capacity to take on more work, including those last minute, unexpected jobs. From time to time we do have a customer who wants a very quick turn round and we try to help them wherever possible.

“The previous KAS machine was a real workhorse so we are optimistic that these two inserters will be still be churning out work for many years to come.”

Kentec was set up in 2006. It works with a wide range of clients including printers, manufacturers, publishers, retailers, and financial and legal services.

The firm employs 10 in usual circumstances, but staffing has been reduced during the virus crisis to allow the business to keep running while adhering to distance requirements.