Bluetree in Muller Martini first, new Landa will be S11P spec

Bluetree Group has invested nearly £2m in the UK’s first Muller Martini Prinova Digital stitching lines – and its new Landa press will also be the country’s first S11P model.

The first of two Muller Martini Prinova Digital saddle stitchers has just arrived at Bluetree’s Rotherham facility, and represent a near-£2m investment by the business which owns Route 1 Print, Instantprint and Kingsbury Press.

The highly-automated hybrid Prinova system runs at 9,000 cyclers per hour and is geared up to handle both digital and conventional work, with short makereadies.

Bluetree’s configuration includes a Hunkeler Unwind and Dyna Cut sheeter, Heidelberg and Muller folders, four conventional feeders and a cover feeder, plus three-knife-trimmer and Perfetto stacker.

“The machines are capable of being fed from any device in the factory,” explained Bluetree Group co-CEO James Kinsella.

“They are very flexible. The key thing for us is that we do lots of jobs on lots of different materials, so job-to-job changeover is really important for us.

He said the firm could feed the stitchers with reels and move from size-to-size automatically, and could also switch from reels to sections, to digital sheets.

Kinsella said the Bluetree team was currently working intensively on setting up the automated workflow and integrating the new stitchers with its internal systems.

“The first is being installed now and the second is following soon,” he added.

Two Screen Truepress digital presses have been relocated within Bluetree’s 9,300sqm main factory to make space for the new Prinovas, which will sit next to its six existing Horizon Stitchliner devices.

Bluetree is also relocating two HP Scitex large-format printers and associated peripheral kit into its adjacent Unit B to make space for the new Landa, which will then sit directly behind the existing Landa S10P. It was the first in the UK when it was installed in 2020.

Kinsella confirmed that the new B1 digital press will actually be the S11P spec announced by Landa at the end of last month, and with the option to add the 11,200sph high-speed module.

“This means we can share some of the services and obviously the operators will be next to each other,” he said.

“We probably will upgrade the speed fairly quickly. We’re excited – 11,200sph sheets on a digital press is pretty unbelievable. If you look at the number of sheets you’re putting on the ground, with one operator running that machine… from an efficiency point of view it’s pretty staggering.”

The new Landa is ready to be installed as soon as the space is ready for it.

Kinsella said the existing Landa S10P was at capacity and running 24/7. The focus with the new S11P will be on "different run lengths and quantities".