‘TIS THE SEASON TO BE WIRE BINDING

A great article on Ideal Print Finishing. Binding Store have worked closley with Paul and the team from day 1.

It’s calendar season: that time of year when wire binding comes into its own;and for Ideal Finishing, a trade finisher in Croydon, that could make a very successful first year of trading even better. The firm started in January 2010 with two staff, and nine months later has eleven employees, and turnover approaching a quarter of a
million pounds.
Director Paul Forrester says that wire
binding is 85% of the company’s work,and with spiral binding added, the proportion goes higher still. While a flood of calendar binding work can be expected,
Ideal has just won another wire binding
contract of around £60,000 from direct mail, print and promotional items company Impakt MMD Group, for jobs such as branded notepads. It means that Ideal Finishing is going to need to invest in more equipment, said Mr Forrester: ‘I’ve got the kit I need – I just need more of them. I need another Renz Mobi
500, a fully automatic auto-punch, and a much larger guillotine. We’ll be looking at a Polar 115 guillotine.’
The Mobi 500 is a semi-automatic wire binding system from Renz which uses reels
of wire rather than cut wire. Paired with the Renz AP360 puncher, it’s capable of a three
minute makeready and can produce 600 books per hour. When bought new, it’s a
£20,000 machine (£55,000 with the
puncher). Renz says it has been selling the systems at a rate of one a week since Ipex.
Mr Forrester has a high regard for Renz and its equipment (he already has one
Mobi 500), but he also has a good relationship with equipment dealer
Binding Store, where good deals can be picked up on used machinery. The
company often has a good range of Renz and Joto equipment, said Mr Forrester, as
well as being strong on parts and service.‘The Renz Mobi is probably more futuristic than any wire binder I’ve seen for years,’ he continued. ‘It handles size changes automatically, and that’s quite amazing.’
He added that Ideal was suited to medium sized jobs from its print customers, and offered a cheaper service than most in what is a niche market. ‘We wouldn’t take anything over about 50,000 copies and 50 pages. Fifty
thousand copies at 14 pages would be lovely though. We are middle of the road
and we take on a lot of work from colleges. We’ve had people ringing to ask
if we could bind their thesis. And we will - no matter how small, we will do it,’ said Mr Forrester.
Renz isn’t the only supplier to the wire binding market: there is Joto (or Rilecart)
from Italy as mentioned, There is a wealth of machines, from entry level benchtop models that small offices might use, through the professional benchtop ranges and the floor standing semi-automatics such as the Mobi and the JBI BB50/H Wire-O binder, up to inline systems that might punch and bind 1500 books per hour.
The recession has seen increasing numbers of printers opt to take wire binding inhouse, according to Daniel Pooley of Renz, which has been good news for equipment
manufacturers in one regard, but not so good for their trade finisher customers. If that is the case, Ideal Finishing appears to buck the trend.
Wire binding

PRINT & PAPER MONTHLY • OCTOBER 2010 • WWW.PAPERANDPRINT.COM Wire binding is a niche market that comes to life around this time of year, as calendars for the new year are
produced – which will be a boon for one trade finisher in particular.
Renz’s Mobi 500 and AP360 puncher is proving to be a popular combination.
‘The market has been pretty fluid,’ said Mr Pooley. ‘The Mobi was launched at
Northprint last year. It allows you to do more jobs with quicker turnaround. You
can bind on demand because makeready is so fast. It’s a workhorse really – some
people throw everything at it. But once you know a trade finisher is happy with it,
you know it can go anywhere.’
Operating the system is comparatively simple too, and Renz says that a day’s
training is sufficient. Next to come from the German manufacturer is a benchtop puncher (the DSP360, a beta of which was shown at Ipex) that will process 40,000 sheets per hour, and a ‘mini Mobi’ that will be well suited to unskilled operators in
digital print houses.
While there’s no release date for the mini Mobi, the DSP360 is due to be available around January/February
2011. Could be worth marking that in your calendar now.
WWW.PAPERANDPRINT.COM • OCTOBER 2010 • PRINT & PAPER MONTHLY
The Mobi 500 semi-automatic wire
binder is a user friendly solution to
wire bind your products with quick
and easy make ready. It is also quick and
easy to install.
It is operated from a touch screen, which
provides fast set up times and is ideal for
short and long run work. No special training
is required.
Offering a consistent quality bind on all
products, the Mobi 500 is ideal for the
production of calendars, but can also be
used for book work. It capably handles
all loose leaf documents, books with
soft or hard cover, and calendars with or without hangers. The
machine can bind products between 90 and
500 mm in width (with a maximum book
thickness of 26 mm) and runs at 800
books of 700 calendars an hour.
The Mobi 500 gives users the
ability to have in-house control of all
your customers’ book and calendar
wire binding requirements whether
for short or long runs. This provides
greater productivity and efficiency for
you and also saves time, as there is
no longer any need to outsource your
customers’ jobs.
THE MOBI 500 FROM RENZ
Developed and fine-tuned over several decades, the James
Burn BB50/H provides a long-lasting Wire-O Binding solution
for printers and finishers worldwide.
The James Burn BB50/H combines a high rate of production with
the versatility to accommodate sheet sizes from 5cm - 50cm, this
compact machine is capable of binding up to 1200 documents per
hour. With its patented closing technology, this solid machine makes
light work of binding pre-punched calendars and documents from
3mm – 23mm in thickness.
With the optional hanger feeder automatically inserting preformed
hangers, calendars are perfectly bound quickly and
easily and with up to 7,500 hangers per reel there is minimal
production interruption for longer runs. Compatible with the
new James Burn Wire-O Flex, consistent productivity is simple
to achieve.
The BB50/H
automatically binds hand
fed pre-punched
documents and is operated
by an electric
footswitch. Size, pitch and
format changes can be
achieved quickly due to easily accessible controls and tool areas.
A perfect partner to any of the James Burn automatic
punches such as the Docupunch, Alphadoc or EX series (up to
150,000 sheets per hour) you can view the machine in action
online at www.jamesburn.com