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The breadth and depth of the capacity of the finishing department at Hobbs is both
vast and comprehensive. One of our key strategies in this respect has been to ensure
that we can carry out as many operations as possible within our own plant. The very
last thing we want to do is to outsource anything.
Printed material from our range of Heidelberg and Komori presses
is folded on one of our six folding systems, each of which is equipped with blank
sheet detectors.
Adhesive binding is carried out on our fully automated Muller Martini Acoro A5 which
is equipped with scanners on each feeding station to ensure absolute accuracy during
the gathering process. Books are trimmed in line and delivered ready for bulk dispatch
or delivery to our fulfilment operation.
Thread-sewing is carried out on our high-speed Muller Martini Inventa Plus. Saddle-stitched
products are produced on our Muller Martini Bravo Plus stitching line. This high-speed
line is also equipped with in-line punching for two or four holes. The ability to
fold products in-line after stitching, trimming and hole punching provides clients
with significant savings in postage costs.
Loose-leaf work is often produced on our unique Muller/Kugler four-knife gathering
and trimming line. This line produces loose-leaf products that have been gathered,
trimmed on all four edges, drilled and stacked in one pass. It can also be used
for flat-stitching manuals and handbooks – a capability that is becoming increasingly
rare.
Wire-o-bound work is produced on our range of Renz equipment; this includes the
latest AP360 automatic punch matched with three binding systems.
Products that are printed digitally on our Indigo 5000,
Nipson Varypress or Océ sheetfed engines are bound on our Horizon BQ470 four-clamp
adhesive binder using PUR adhesive. PUR provides a very strong bind quality with
excellent lay flat characteristics. Alternatively we can bind using hotmelt EVA
adhesive on our Horizon BQ270 automated single-clamp binder. Trimming is carried
out on our Horizon HT30 automatic trimmer.
The benefit to the client of the application of PUR adhesive to short-run and on-demand
books means that excellent bind strength can now be achieved on digital products.
Saddle-stitched products are folded, stitched and trimmed on our Watkiss document
finishing system or drilled on one of our FIVE drilling systems. The latest drill
installed is the Hang 207-30 fully programmable system built specially to meet our
on-demand production needs; this system allows multi-hole drilling of runs as low
as one to be quickly and efficiently processed.
In addition to the above, we laminate all covers in-house on our Autobond Mini TH52
thermal laminator running at up to 7,000 covers per hour. We individually shrink- wrap on one of our two Shanklin shrink-wrapping lines with a capacity of 130 packs
per minute and case bind short-run work on our range of Schmedt binding equipment.
All of this equipment is supported by 70 specialist bindery staff that keep
the lines running from 6am Monday until 10pm Friday each week and into the weekends,
whenever necessary, to meet customer requirements.
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