Hawick-based commercial printer Richardson & Son has invested in a Morgana Autocreaser Pro XL from CLC.

The Scottish borders-based family-run business, founded in 1946 by Jimmy ‘The Printer’ Richardson, installed the £15,990 device in February to speed up its processes as increasing demand on-short run jobs was hampering efficiency.

“We do a lot of creasing and perforating on our Thomson Platen machines, but it takes quite a bit of skill and time to make-ready those machines,” said company co-director Jamie Richardson.

“A lot of the jobs we do are small runs, like sock bands and swing tags, for example, so make-ready was taking longer than the time to actually produce the work.”

Richardson, Jimmy’s grandson, now runs the business with his mother and father, Murray and Ebie, and employs three other staff members including printer David Finnie, who has been with the business for more than 40 years, graphic designer and press operator Robert Scott, and secretary and bookkeeper Christine Rodger.

Richardson continued: “One of the team had seen something about more automated creasing products online, so we made enquiries to three of our print finishing equipment suppliers. All of them came back with the same answer – that the Morgana AutoCreaser Pro XL would be able to handle our needs.

“We knew the Morgana team, as we have a few other Morgana machines on-site, so then, because of our location, we needed to find the best service solution as well as the best price. Although pricing was pretty close between them all, CLC offered an on-site demo, so in the end we went with them.”

The new device can crease sheets up to 385x1,300mm, with a table extension, at 8,500sph and features a vacuum top feeder. Its creasing rule eliminates paper tearing and cracking while the feeder has an ultrasonic double sheet detection, an inline rotary perforation system with the capacity for up to five perforations at the same time, as well as the option of a cross perforation unit.

The AutoCreaser Pro XL has already increased productivity, according to Richardson, running every day on jobs such as perforating raffle tickets, creasing menus, order of service sheets, greeting cards, sock bands and swing tickets.

Richardson said: “The AutoCreaser Pro XL can be loaded with up to 200mm of stock, meaning we can set the job up, check it is correct, then walk away and let the machine do its thing.

“Being a small team, we need that level of automation so that we can keep our production output high. We also liked the capacity to store a large number of job presets in the on-screen menu, meaning that complex jobs that come back to us frequently can be set up with just the touch of a button,” added Richardson.