Remous mulls site upgrade following 200,000 investment

The digital and litho printer has stowed its Polar guillotine to make room for a Perfecta 92TS while it considers a site upgrade.

The £1.3m turnover company bought the Perfecta 92TS in February from Intelligent Finishing Systems to cope with the volumes produced by the Horizon BQ270C that it bought the previous year.

Remous co-director Alan Bunter said: "We needed to address a bottleneck. Our Polar guillotine was 10 years old and we didn’t have space for two, so we assessed the impact that a new, more automated system would have."

Bunter added that the high automation and simplicity of the machine had led to reduced lead times and enabled the company to reduce the number of operators, cutting overtime costs.

"Now our lead times have reduced, we can be more responsive on fast turnaround work and more competitive with our costs," he said.

Co-director Keith Sparks said: "We also replaced our two-year-old Océ digital press with a Ricoh Pro C901 Graphic Arts Edition in May and have one more trimmer investment coming up in August, but apart from that we won’t be spending any more money on machines for a while.

"We want to upgrade to a bigger site because right now we just haven't got the room," he said.

Meanwhile, Sparks said that the company had streamlined its processes and halved its minimum charge since investing in its first laminator, a Foliant Gemini 400A B3, six months ago.

Bunter added: "Over the course of a year around 35% of our outsourcing costs were on lamination.

"We were paying a £45 minimum charge on each lamination job, and so we had to look at bringing it in house."

The minimum charge reduction has cut customer costs enhancing the company's competitiveness, and shrunk its carbon footprint through reducing transportation, according to Bunter.

Sparks added: "We are still outsourcing A2 and B2 jobs but we can trim A3 covers and business cards inhouse now.

"Before we were taking deliveries and making orders with laminating companies every day; now we see them twice a week."