December 2, 2020

KOLBUS short run casemaking solution for Prime Group

on Tolley, with newly installed KOLBUS DA 270

With the current pandemic causing disruption in the supply chain, and Brexit just around the corner, the personalised and on-demand book trade is looking closer to home for manufacturing solutions. To capitalise on this South Normanton based Prime looked to produce high quality cased books, on demand and in runs starting at one.

With 18 digital presses and high speed inkjet printers within the group Prime could fulfil the requirements of publishers for the printing of medium and long run backlist titles, and runs of one, but needed to streamline their hard cased book production line to cope with producing the wide variety of book sizes and quantities. To do this Prime turned to KOLBUS UK for a solution and have now installed a KOLBUS DA 270 casemaker along with a KOLBUS EMP 513 casing in line at their new facility in South Normanton, conveniently located just off junction 28 of the M1 motorway.

The KOLBUS DA 270 casemaker delivers fully automatic production of cases and digitally printed book covers with varying spine widths at rates of up to 65 cycles/minute. It is a versatile machine for a wide range of applications.
The non-stop case feeder is designed to be easily operated by one person. The centre strip cross-cut unit is capable of automatically changing cutting widths from cycle to cycle. This allows the machine to produce, for example, hardcover photobooks where centre strip width is likely to vary from product to product. Width adjustment is completely automatic during running production with no change of material.
Jon Tolley, director of Prime, said: “the challenge was to be able to supply absolutely top-quality cased books in the on-demand marketplace. These KOLBUS machines are enabling us to do just that. We researched the market and nothing else touched the throughput and capabilities of these machines. The KOLBUS DA 270 has full digital capacity, perfect for the high number of size changes and run lengths we have through every shift. The efficient board cutter also minimises our inventory for board. With a reduction in man hours we are producing absolutely beautiful quality products in a fraction of the overall time we were taking”.

KOLBUS UK managing director Greg Bird said: “It is particularly pleasing to see how the recent digital developments of the KOLBUS DA 270 has made the KOLBUS casemaking solution the perfect fit in the short run digital market, allowing the known benefits of KOLBUS quality and productivity to be available to an ever growing digital book sector. Prime were keen to explore the full range of digital options available on the KOLBUS DA range and it was clear that this was the right solution, both for the present and for the developing future production needs of Prime.

We were able to provide comprehensive training of new operators for the DA casemaking machine and recently purchased KOLBUS EMP casing in machine which together provide an exceedingly high specification digital cased book production facility at Prime’s new premises”