Melbourne printer Ready Steady Print is opening a new trade-based finishing division weeks after installing a new Horizon PUR binder at its plant in Clayton.
"There's plenty of trade finishers offering EVA perfect binding but we've identified a gap in the market for short-run finishing especially when it comes to high quality PUR binding," says Joshua Kamil, owner/director of Ready Steady Print, a ten-year-old print and online print management business based in Melbourne's south-east. [Polyurethane Reactive (PUR) is a durable book binding glue.]
The Horizon BQ-280PUR Perfect Binder - with digital print friendly processing, quick set-up and changeover for shorter production runs, book-of-one capability, and in-line verification for document integrity - was installed last month at Ready Steady by a team from Currie Group.
"There are not that many options for small format finishing equipment and in the end the decision to go with the Horizon came down to the after-sales service from Currie and the skill level of their techs, who are always available to help," says Kamil. "It was just the logical, right decision and the Horizon produces a far superior finished product than our previous machine. The installation went very well and we'll be ready to bring a trade-based finishing service to the market in a couple of weeks, offering things like next day PUR perfect binding for short run books as well as same day and next day celloglazing, creasing and folding. We're now setting up the website to handle finishing jobs on line, including things like workflow, pricing all the way through to booking jobs in for collection.
"Being able to offer PUR bindings allows us to get a foot in the door with other printers and start a conversation about their finishing outwork. There's a lot of small to medium-sized printers out there who would just send out a booklet job to trade printers because it's easier and less hassle but having the PUR binder allows us to talk to printers about how we can help them to complete their short run work and extract more profit out of their jobs.
"We're confident that we're well-placed to take advantage of the opportunity," Kamil says. "We've upgraded a lot of our equipment to Horizon kit over the past six months and we have a lot of firepower when it comes to digital print, running a fleet of Xerox Colourpress 1000i's. We now run 12 hour shifts but we have the potential to run overnight if the business is there."
Ready Steady Print, established in 2006 and employing a staff of seven, is a leading online print business that manages millions of dollars’ worth of print jobs every year - including booklets, business cards, postcards, catalogues and brochures.