Finishing & Screen Printing
Two new Venturas MC for M+S Reliure, Yvonand (Switzerland)
Monday 01. June 2015 - TWEI?NMC Lends New Impetus to High-Quality Print Products
The M+S Reliure SA bookbindery, which is based in Yvonand in the Swiss canton of Vaud, has been using not one, but two Muller Martini Ventura MC book sewing machines featuring the TWE¦?NMC option, making it the first graphic arts company in Switzerland to do so. That enables the innovative company to also stitch smaller folded signatures directly in a book block, and to offer its discerning customers in the luxury goods industry entirely new product configurations.
“We’ve seen a big change in our customers’ attitudes in recent years,” says David Lude, Director of M+S Reliure, which focuses solely on print finishing. “Today, they have much higher expectations of printing plants and bookbinderies. They’re consistently looking out for new ideas and even more attractive and more interesting means of advertising so that they can stand out from the competition. Sizes, for instance, are increasingly extreme – either as large as A3 or as small as 9 X 12 centimeters. In short, our customers always want something special, though they also keep an eye on the price …”
M+S Reliure will therefore pull out all the stops to advertise the TWE¦?NMC option to its customers and show them how, as a first for Switzerland, smaller folded signatures can now also be stitched directly in a book block in Yvonand. “We’ll visit many of our regular customers personally to show them the diverse options of shorter signatures in thread sewing.”
Another reason why Lude is convinced that tween products will lend additional impetus is that M+S Reliure mainly produces high-quality catalogs and (corporate image) brochures for the watch industry, banks and cultural organizations, in particular for customers in the Romandie. They are frequently finished with hot foil embossing and die-cutting. To this end, M+S Reliure uses two brand-new autoplatine die-cutting machines from Bobst, making it the only graphic arts company in Switzerland to do so.
To take full advantages of the additional creative product configuration options, close contact between the customer, the advertising agency, the printing plant and the bookbindery is increasingly important, says David Lude. “Once we get all four partners together, we can discuss what’s technically feasible in terms of production.”
Impressive Demo
The modern company processes its roughly one million brochures a year exclusively using Muller Martini systems. While it occasionally uses a Prima saddle stitcher that was installed in 2002, it mainly uses a Bolero perfect binder that was commissioned in 2007 for softcover and two Ventura MC machines with the TWE¦?NMC option that were installed in August for thread sewing.
The latest investment, which was necessary for capacity reasons, was won, following intensive talks with Muller Martini (Lude describes the “project management as truly exemplary”), by the demo of the Ventura MC at the Muller Martini Hardcover Forum. Together with his team, Lude was present in person for the demo, which he describes as “impressive”, in the German town of Bad Mergentheim.
The company director explains that the two Ventura MC machines provide much higher productivity, quality and user-friendliness (“the machine does a lot itself”) than the two book sewing machines that have been replaced.
In addition, Asir 3 automatic signature image recognition ensures the correct sequence of signatures of M+S Reliure’s thread-sewn products, which have an average of 6,000 to 7,000 copies. “For us, that’s an excellent argument to present to our customers,” says Lude.