Naresh Chandna, director, Sai Printo Pack Naresh Chandna, director, Sai Printo Pack tells Rahul Kumar his reasons to choose the Bindwel Freedom 4K from Impel-Welbound. Please describe your company. We are an integrated book printing firm with in-house capabilities from design to fulfilment. We address a large variety of publishers from legal, academic, education and trade. We are equipped with both digital and offset printing facilities for both hardcover and paperback production. When did you start using the Impel-Welbound product? We had a single-clamp binder from Welbound long back. We decided to have a look at one more machine from them after Impel broke away from the Trivandrum group and put up its products in the last PrintPack exhibition. We installed the Freedom 4K binder in October 2019. What are the features of the machine you like? Its speed, flexibility, expandability and reliable local service support. Above all, it is future-ready for various gluing technologies. Why did you decide to use the Freedom 4K? We already had a medium speed binder with us, before, that gives about 1,500 books per hour. However, we faced bottlenecks while addressing the changing needs of our customers, be it in terms of turnaround times or quality. Impel introduced us to the Bindwel Freedom 4K machine that can produce up to 4,000 books per hour, and also can be linked to a gatherer and three-knife trimmer. What are the features that tilted the favour in this? Freedom 4K gives you the freedom to add machines before or after it, to complete the line. One can upgrade to PUR binding without any difficulty. Job changeover is fairly easy to handle. It is a modern machine, unlike some of the pre-owned imported models that we looked at, and helps produce high quality books while keeping your operational costs minimal. Its powerful MIS interface gives us timely information on production and costs. How much have these features helped you? We have been able to address our customer requirements better, providing deliveries faster than before. Our customers also have appreciated the quality of ornamental creasing, side gluing and firmly nipped book spines. For what applications is the product used? We use the binder for all our soft cover book production requirements. If there’s a critical post press job that has come your way, would you rely on this to see it through? Yes, of course, with a brand new machine and with the support of capable application engineers from Impel — there will be no concern at all. The advantage of dealing with a forward looking company like Impel is that they do not go only by the specs sheet, and are willing to address some on-the-job issues we are likely to encounter. What’s the quality like? Compared to our earlier process, the spine and side gluing are much better, and so are cover creasing and the firmness of the book spine. How easy is it to use and handle? This machine is ideal for book printers who have production requirement of above 10,000 books per day. As the future is for inline binding — as space, manpower, energy and wastage need to be reduced — this is an ideal machine to invest in. Would you say that it offers value for money? The machine offers a good value for money. Though the investment costs are higher compared to pre-owned European machines, the overall cost of ownership is much lower. Be it energy consumption, space requirement, upgradeability – Freedom 4K stands ahead. Were there any difficulties during the use of Freedom 4K? There are teething issues with any new machine or technology and we faced it in this case as well. The biggest advantage I see is the quick response of the service team and their ability to address the issue without any delay. Who do you think the Freedom 4K is right for? Inline binding has become a necessity and every book printer will need to switch over from the current offline solutions based on the production requirements. Under what circumstances would you recommend it to others? Unless your requirements are short to medium run or if you are in the digital book print business, you will need a machine of this speed and expandability. CONCLUSION User’s verdict Speed ★ ★ ★ ★ Quality ★ ★ ★ ★ Reliability ★ ★ ★ ★ Value for money ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Supplier’s response Pallippuram Sajith, director, Impel Services (A Welbound Group Company), says, “Bindwel Freedom 4K is a 12-clamp perfect binder which can be connected inline with a gatherer and three-knife trimmer. Freedom 4K occupies the minimum space and consumes lowest energy among the class of binders delivering similar throughput. Be it thin or thick books or a wide range of signatures or covers, Freedom 4K provides optimal quality with minimal wastage. Along with our Signa 4K gatherer and Trimit three-knife trimmer, Freedom 4K establishes the ‘Bindline’ inline soft cover book production system. Sai Print o Pack have always strived to differentiate themselves by delivering good quality binding in tight schedules consistently and Freedom 4K will vastly help them in their core strength.” Contact details Pallippuram Sajith, director Impel Services (A Welbound Group Company) Email: sajith@welbound.com Mobile: +91 93210 86601

(l-r) The nextgen Guptas- Rajiv, Sanjay, and Prashant Seeking flexibility, SDR Printers opted for a Bindwel Freedom > 4K – 12-clamp perfect binder nine months ago. The book printing unit, based in Tronica city, in the outskirts of New Delhi, has been growing at a fair clip and so, new challenges required new solutions. A PrintWeek report. Founded in 1998 by Anil Jain, the offset printing unit located in Nazafgarh Road focuses primarily on large Government tenders, across India, with a specific interest in textbooks. SDR Printers produces educational books for leading MNC and Indian publishers. It provides end-to-end facility, beginning with pre-press to fulfilment. The company kept adding web offset machines to its array of Heidelberg sheetfeds, and did not realise that it was running out of space — space constraints for machines, some manual operations that took up space; and the work-in-progress between the sewing machine and the Welbound six-clamp binder. The family-run company, established by LN Gupta in 1986, realised that it needed to have a long-term plan to service its customers better. And so, the new generation of Guptas — Sanjay, Deepak and Rajiv — got into action. They brainstormed and created a plan, which helped them increase the available space by acquiring a nearby factory and increasing internal efficiencies through replacement of machines. The backbone of the print facility is an eight-colour heatset Heidelberg Harris reelfed machine. This is complete with an inline stacker that bundles the signatures into neat piles that can be transported for signature gathering. Three high-speed folding machines support the four-colour sheetfed presses, three in all, from Heidelberg. Then there are five thread sewing machines which produce book blocks later bound by a six-clamp WB2000 plus an offline Kolbus binder. As most of the books produced by SDR are either thread-sewn or wire-stitched before being covered on an adhesive binder, the speed differences among the machines posed a challenge to their production. So the first plan, along with increased space and installation of more sewing machines, was to boost the adhesive binding capability. Books delivered into a conveyor connected to a trimmer Multiple options The SDR top management explored various options, including a pre-owned Kolbus line that would help streamline the workflow from gathering to three-knife trimming. “We had already seen a few machines in Europe and were in a discussion with Welbound Technical Services to inspect the line and then help commission the same in our factory,” Rajiv Gupta explains. Anil Kumar, the Impel-Welbound head for sales, helped the Guptas and the shopfloor team through each and every step, even though the company was not considering an investment in a Welbound kit. Rajiv Gupta adds, “During PrintPack 2019, we learnt of the separation of the manufacturing arm from Kerala and the front-end headquartered in Mumbai, and that’s when we took a unanimous decision to invest in the Bindwel Freedom > 4K.” Sanjay Gupta adds, “We evaluated the 12-clamp binder from Impel-Welbound during PrintPack 2019 and liked the concept. You can start with the binder, add a book block feeder when you need, add a gathering machine that can also have side stitching, and finally connect it to an inline trimmer. A solution that gave us complete freedom, of effectively utilising the resources — be it capital, space or manpower.” Round-pile cover feeder allows additional stacking Growth plans Rajiv Gupta points out, “We had no doubt in our partner for our growth plans for bookbinding. Here was a person and his company which was willing to help us in any manner, even if it meant getting a pre-owned Kolbus commissioned. Welbound had a clear idea of the challenges faced by book printers. In fact, I think it probably has one of the best after-sales service teams for post-press in India. Plus, its own manufacturing plant in Karnataka. This backing, plus the benefits offered by the 12-clamp binder, made us pick the binder for our new capacity.” Sanjay Gupta adds, “There were teething issues with the new machine in our place. We were moving from a six-clamp which is more forgiving in process issues. Also, we were moving to a system that had the capability to expand in both directions, and demanded that our process delivers inputs that are consistent.” And so, the SDR top management invited Suresh Nair, the Impel-Welbound’s technical director, who is based in Bengaluru. Rajiv Gupta says, “Nair visited us and spent two days in educating us and our operations team about the ‘do’s and don’ts’ and also highlighted a few gaps in process and equipment. The Impel-Welbound team even spent time in adjusting other machines like the thread-sewing machines, so that the binder received consistent inputs.” The right solution SDR believes that it invested in the right solution that can be expanded with gluing options and add-ons before or after the binder. The Bindwel Freedom > 4K binder is capable of producing 4,000 books per hour, has centrally-adjustable twelve book clamps, an infeed and a lay-down delivery that takes the books to an inline trimmer. Impel-Welbound is selling bindery in the Indian and African markets. Some of these are shipped as gathering-binding combination with an in-line Signa gatherer. And a few have opted for PUR gluing in addition to EVA. According to Kumar of Impel-Welbound, the book printers in North India are demanding more throughputs. So far, pre-owned, European equipment have not delivered as per expectations. Most of them operate at half the rated speed and create maintenance issues. Therefore, a new machine that can have modular add-ons is the right tech-option. Key SDR customers are Orient Blackswan (OBS), McGraw Hill and Rachna Sagar. The Guptas are very proud about the fact that they bagged the first prize in excellence in book production from the Federation of Indian Publishers. This was the Sangam Atlas produced for OBS. Five simple tips from Suresh Nair, the Impel-Welbound CTO 1. Inline binders help you reduce the space requirement by 50% and man-power requirements by 70%. 2. Pre-owned binders run at very low operational efficiencies – be it speed, turnaround times or break-downs – turn out expensive even in the medium-run. 3. Per book cost is absolutely important, whether you are servicing an MNC publisher or a government textbook board. It is not the investment cost that matters. 4. Inline binders are less forgiving than the offline solutions when it comes to quality and consistency of the inputs. Be it the quality of pressed and stacked signatures, book block thickness uniformity, consistency and tightness of thread-sewing or conformity of side stitching. But then all these are important for reducing in-process wastage as well as delivering quality output at increased speeds. So if you are waiting for the day when all these inputs improve before you invest in an inline binding solution, then it will be too late. Buy the horse and the process of fitting the cart will automatically follow. 5. It is high time to look at the long term objectives to save costs; be it choosing the right grain direction, making the cover longer than the book block, having regular maintenance plan for your old machines, moving to non-pigmented better quality adhesives, using a high capacity melter while doing thick books, have energy audits done and most importantly, safety first.

((l-r) Devendra Pathak and Manoj Kumar Pathak Ghaziabad-based Education Stores have completed the installation of WB@2500, a six-clamp perfect binder from Impel-Welbound. Founded by brothers Devendra Kumar and Manoj Kumar Pathak, the 23-year-old company is an integrated print house with a focus on book printing. They cater to large private publishers as well as government textbook corporations and mostly just-in-time printing. “Tough situations call for tough people to make brave decisions so that the customer is not inconvenienced. We are not used to hiding behind excuses and when our customers needed the right quality products, delivered quickly, we needed the WB@2500,” said Devendra Kumar. Speaking further about the investment and the timing of it (semi-lockdown situation in the region), Manoj Kumar said, “When one of our customers wanted about 15 lakh saddle-stitched books delivered at different locations in India, with a near-impossible time schedule, we gladly accepted the challenge.” The WB@2500 with the maximum speed of 2,500 books per hour is packed with several features including separate side glueing, adjustable ornamental creasing, inline cover feeding, powerful cam based nipping station and delivery among others According to Impel, the new WB@2500 was dispatched from Bangalore, delivered, installed, commissioned and training imparted to the operators – all that under ten days. “This is a new record for us, and maybe the new normal in the coming days”, said Anilkumar Nair, director sales of Impel-Welbound. “We are seeing the demand come back for machines, since May 2020 and we have already shipped six machines to the northern region. Insourcing and quality enhancement are the key reasons for the demand,” he added. “The technical know-how shared by the sales and installation team has enhanced our knowledge of bookbinding techniques. They have helped us to achieve the highest quality of perfect bound books. Many of their suggestions have helped us to rectify the errors in our existing process. Most importantly, with this addition, all books produced are of the highest quality which is giving our clients complete satisfaction and this is a matter of pride for us,” said Devendra Kumar.

(l-r) Anil Jain, Sunil Jain and Navin Jain with the newly installed machine New Delhi-based Arihant Offset has installed a brand new WB@2500 six-clamp perfect binding machine manufactured by Impel-Welbound in Bengaluru. Founded in 1998 by Anil Jain, the offset printing unit located in Nazafgarh Road focuses primarily on large Government tenders, across India, with a specific interest in textbooks. “As some of the jobs that we undertake are of huge volumes, sometimes there is huge pressure on capacities. We also cannot build fresh capacity as some of these jobs are seasonal or once in a while. We have additional print partners in NCR and Mathura who help us in times of such capacity requirements”, said Anil Jain. “We have always met our customer requirements, be it on turnaround times or quantity or fulfilment. Our USP is- be it one thousand books or one million, we will produce and deliver it, anywhere in India,” he added. The sprawling 40000 sqft plant is equipped with a wide range of pre-press and post-press equipment apart from a raft of presses. Talking about some of their challenging jobs, Jain said, “ We are especially proud of a book made for the ministry of agriculture, from design to delivery in 72 hours. There is also a 65 million books order for a textbook corporation, which was delivered in 60 days from the date of order.” “And not to forget when Punjab Technical University wanted six lakh answer sheets within one week, they relied on Arihant to fulfil the order, and we promptly delivered them,” he added. “As they are used to meeting such near-impossible deadlines when they ordered a machine, they wanted it installed within 10 days. We had just done such a task recently for another customer and that gave us the confidence”, said Anil Kumar, director sales of Impel-Welbound. “From the time of discussions, order finalisation to installation, we found the Impel team to be professional. One of the top reasons we opted for WB@2500 is that we wanted to insource some of our critical jobs that are high value,” said Jain. “Apart from the top quality finishing, the MIS feature of the machine was something that impressed us. As we cater to tenders that are time-bound, the information of production and cost parameters on a daily/periodic basis is helping us immensely to track the status of the jobs,” he concluded. This is one of the seven WB@2500 perfect binders installed by Impel-Welbound in NCR region so far, since partial lifting of lockdown in the area since May 2020.

Arvind Kalasur, director-technical services, and Suresh Nair, CTO, Impel-Welbound, outside the Rokin Technology premises Impel-Welbound, India’s leading supplier of book binding machines, has entered into an agreement with Rokin Technology to introduce hard cover case-making solutions in India. Arvind Kalasur, director-technical services, travelled with Suresh Nair, the CTO of the group, to evaluate the Rokin products prior to this announcement. Rokin Technology has twenty years of experience in handling hard cover, rigid boards and converting them to cases, stationery and boxes. The latest solution from Rokin was displayed at international events, and according to Nair, they are exemplary because of their compact design and high-end automation. “The R18 case-maker occupies minimal floor space, and has excellent “throughput to area” ratio. The gluing system has a viscometer which helps control the viscosity of the adhesive–water combination. This is important to maintain consistency during higher speeds. The machine also accepts a wide range of covers and can bind up to seven pieces of boards,” Nair said. In addition to the R18 case-maker, Rokin also manufactures board cutters, corner cutters and other auxiliary equipment required for hard cover manufacturing. So far, Welbound had stayed away from the hard cover market, instead focusing its attention on soft covers. Despite customer feedback about building such solutions, the demand for perfect binders kept the company’s engineering team busy. “A lot of our leading customers who also have European soft and hard cover binders, constantly asked us to provide alternate solutions — new, flexible, yet cost effective. So when we met the Rokin team, we realised that we can be partners and work together in order to fill this gap,” said Kalasur who is spearheading the partnership, in addition to heading Welbound Technical Services. Seana Huang, sales director of Rokin Technolgy, said, “We have already shipped machines to India, and with this association with Impel-Welbound, who have a great reputation and extensive after-sales support, we hope to have many machines shipped into India soon.”

Within three months since the installation, the new binders have delivered more than 10-lakh books each Ganesh Printers, a Kolhapur-based commercial printer, which specialises in textbook printing, has installed four WB@2500 six-clamp perfect binding machines manufactured by Welbound Wolrdwide P Ltd in Bengaluru. The four new binders, which were commissioned in December 2018, have added to a battery of five six-clamp Welbound perfect binding kits and a Muller Martini inline perfect binding equipment on Ganesh Printers’ shopfloor. With the new investment, the company can now manufacture 2-lakh books per day up from its earlier capacity of 1.2-lakh books per day. “The idea is to accelerate time-to-market without compromising on book quality – that’s our USP. And therefore, investing in Welbound machines ahead of the textbook season made a lot of sense” said Sanjay Thorwat, director at Ganesh Printers. Shakti Nadar, area sales manager for Maharashtra, Impel Welbound said, “Ganesh Printers has scaled up its capacities and we have always supported their requirements to market - be it quality or speed. This was made possible by the supply of our new generation EPIC perfect binders, cool bind adhesives from Henkel and our prompt service support.” The company, which was established by Thorwat’s father MG Thorwat in 1987, started operations with a treadle press. Today, it houses two four-colour Heidelberg sheetfed offset presses and six web offset printing machines. These are supported by two CTP devices, two folders from Stahl and Shoei, two Welbound three-knife trimmers and 10 perfect binding machines. Operating from a 1-lakh sqft production floor in three shifts, Ganesh Printers produces government textbooks for Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra, and Andhra Pradesh. Within three months since the installation, the new binders have delivered more than 10-lakh books each. “The new machines with a higher speed of 2,500 books per hour improve productivity and this is significant especially during peak season. But that’s not all, these machines are sturdy and reliable. What I particularly like about the WB@2500 is the moving CAM type cover nipping unit that produces squarely nipped books,” added Thorwat.

The Henkel-Welbound Book Days will be a specialised gathering of book publishers and printers, who will explore the best new ideas for innovation and growth. Enabled by Henkel and Welbound, the events hosted at PrintPack 2019 will be practical and collaborative. The aim is to tap into the renewed optimism in the book sector with publishers, printers and designers. The latest theme – Growth For All – is all about the book's potential to transform the publishing world and drive new growth. This will mark the beginning of a series of activities and events through the year to celebrate Books For All, that will take transpire in important book hubs across India. "Books for All is an attempt to build a much more unified structure," Pallippuram Sajith, director of Welbound Worldwide P Ltd says. "Some say the book industry and book publishing structure is fragmented and in a world where clients want faster, better, cheaper executions. We want a book print firm to ensure it is possible." Team Welbound's aim through Book Days - Books for All is to re-kindle the joy of the printed books and drum support in its mission to provide "faster, better, cheaper" books for publishers and readers. This will be possible through three weapons in Welbound's ever-growing armoury: technical knowledge; respect for content and how to organise it in the best possible manner; and above all, unite the creative and production functions in a way that hasn’t been done for decades. Sajith says, "People expect relevance these days. And so, you must speak to each person in the shopfloor or on the editorial desk in a unique way. During PrintPack we will create a special booth wherein users can have success to simpler versions of techs-specs and tech-kit. Plus we are creating chat-points which can relate to everyone from industry veterans to millenials." Each and every day at the PrintPack show will see ... - Book about Book Days: A souvenir that celebrates past 20 years of Indian book printing, book awards plus the plans for the year. The plans include: special events for printers and publishers in their cities and localities - The launch of E-utilities: Apps that will help you resolve issues, train team members and address customer requirements - Facebook Live: Book interviews with leading book printers which will be conducted by the PrintWeek India Welbound Worldwide is bullish about books. And along with the thousands of book print factories across India, the company is "excited" about helping clients and harnessing a robust ecosystem plus that create a labour force that knows how to produce the best books at the lowest cost. Welbound will unveil seven knowledge-sharing projects from 1 to 6 February A quick introduction to the mobile book testing lab - that can be set up easily at any place The importance of fundamentals. Emphasise the quality and cost-effectiveness of binding which starts and ends with planning. How to build strong books, more cost effectively Meet the book specialists. Confabulate with India's top brains in book manufacturing planning, bookbinding, adhesives, machines and maintenance Prize-winning contest - Guess what! - Grain direction, GSM, Page Pull Value, Adhesive coat layer and a lot more Practical workshops to grasp the relationship between paper, bookbinding machine, adhesives and the quality of binding. Be ready to be surprised New Gen Smart machines that will communicate with you and boost your productivity What do you want to know about book printing: Answer the questionnaire completed that will provide you with all relevant information and also help us build a service platform that will answer your questions - real time, at the touch or swipe on a smartphone