De-bottlenecking the bindery at Gopsons

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“We can compete with China in book production,” says Sunil Goel about Gopsons’ capacity and competitiveness in book printing exports. Although the ratio of export and domestic markets is currently equal, the margins are better on exports, says Goel. Aakriti Agarwal reports on her recent tour of three of the Gopsons plants in Noida.

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• Gopsons installed a fully automated Muller Martini and Sigloch bindery unit at one of their plants in Noida

We have been visiting Gopsons since 2001 when the company ordered its first pair of brand-new KBA Rapida sheet fed presses for installation in their greenfield plant in Sector 64. The plant quickly filled with the first Rapidas, a pair of Muller Martini Concept presses, a 12-colour Mark Andy narrow web flexo press, and various automated cutting and binding equipment including the first Wohlenberg perfect binder with the PUR glue option in the country.

In ensuing visits, the huge space of 100,000 square feet seemed entirely populated with the addition of three more Rapidas and stacks of printed work in progress. Now the plant has accommodated one of the huge perfect binding lines acquired as part of an acquisition from a Scandinavian plant in 2009. This acquisition has been so huge that even after setting up another completely automated bindery in the old plant in Sector 60, there is additional equipment that awaits installation, for lack of space.

In the past eight years, Gopsons has become a formidable book printing plant incorporating all the latest book production technologies from prepress to printing and binding and finishing.  We estimate that its capacity for producing books has gone up from eight to fifteen times in the same period. It is a book printing business that is ready to manufacture and deliver printed and bound books with quality and speed and price that are internationally competitive.  

Gopsons purchased a huge almost new bindery and two sheetfed presses from Scandinavia in an astute and quickfire deal. The same plant also had two Timson presses which Gopsons chose not to buy due to the lack of space in their plants. However, they did eventually buy a Timson T32 book press from Spain (installed in a new rented premises) and are currently evaluating the purchase of another Timson as they also search for land. The Sector 64 plant is now fully equipped and the old plant in Sector 60 has also been modernised. The company’s strategy seems to be to build and consolidate new plants and then modernise the old ones.

Citing the economic crunch and the abject decline of book printing plants in the West, Sunil Goel says that there are good machines available in the market but space is the biggest constraint. He adds that there is demand for book printing but it is important to have capacity to produce and deliver large volumes. Gopsons aims to make its plants independent profit centres that each handle a particular segment of the business. The company is looking forward to further large-scale expansion but the price of land in Noida is very high especially since the next new plant would require a much higher order of space.

Automation in postpress and binding is never easy to implement because the equipment is  expensive and difficult to utilize optimally. Goel says that automation is economically viable if done either for large volumes or for single formats and may not be effective otherwise. In the past few years, the company seems to have increased its book printing and binding capacity by at least ten times. Goel says, “We can compete with China now.”
The current modernisation project is an exercise in material handling and de-bottlenecking every process. The art of automating postpress is really an engineering exercise of matching up processes that work at different speeds and require buffer zones and time delays for curing and drying before the next operation. Nevertheless, the company has been able to bring the entire process from feeding paper to printing, folding and producing a variety of binding styles into on-line, in-line and near-line configurations.

Kolbus soft cover line KM473
The almost new Kolbus soft cover line at the Sector 64 plant can be driven by either signatures to be glued or sewn bookblocks. There are hand feeding elements for two people, twenty gathering stations, a ZU804 escape delivery for eliminating the wrong book without stopping the machine, a bookblock feeder, set up element, and end sheet tipping station. The Kolbus 32-clamp perfect binder has a main milling station, base for first spine gluing unit, intermediate IR drier, base for side gluing unit, and cold glue spine and twin flex glue units with circulation.

Other features of this automated soft cover line include two pre-melters, gauzing station, rotary cover feeder, two nipping and pressing stations, laydown delivery to the Solema conveyer system including a rotary drying tower, a Solema switch to escape delivery, and a Kolbus automatic 3-knife trimmer with an in-feed from the left and a compensating book stacker with delivery to the right. There is also a Sigloch bookmark inserting machine which is a standalone but can be fitted inline with the machine.

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• The Sigloch book preparation line at Gopsons plant in Noida

Muller Martini Diamant hardcover line
The Sigloch book preparation line and Muller Martini Diamant hardcover line were installed by Gopsons in the Sector 60 plant over the past year for completely automating all the components of hard cover books including endpaper pasting, glueing and gauzing and casing-in. The machine completely automates the hard cover book binding process. The book production line has a Solema auto load bookblock feeder, a Sigloch nipping machine, end- sheet tipping machine for the HHS cold glue system, and bookblock gluing and banding machines. It also has an inline tape binding machine with quick change device. The 60 metre length of the Sigloch conveyer with in-built dryers winds around the bindery and delivers the book blocks to the 3-knife trimmer and then to the Diamant casing-in line.

The inline equipment includes the Sigloch diverter, Sigloch double nipping and pressing machine with lay down device connecting the conveyer to a 3-knife trimmer which further connects to a conveyer for moving the block into the Diamant casing in-line. The compact Diamant flowline has in-feed conveyer with pre-heater, rounding and backing station, glue unit, bookmark suction device, gauzing station, glue unit, head and tail binding station, hot melt glue nozzles and the pre-melter casing in unit.

Cases are manufactured off-line on a Hauruf case maker. The ribbon inserter can be integrated inline, but for the time being this is being done manually. Other functions that can be added in-line on the machine are jacketing and shrink-wrapping if the bar codes and price tags have been printed on the book cover. There is a spine rounding option as well which can be surpassed if required. Goel says that 3600 books an hour can be produced on this fully automated bindery.

Timson book press
Gopsons’ Timson 32 heatset web offset press is designed for printing single colour books. The Timson handles a wide range of materials from 28 gsm Bible paper through to the bulky and coated papers used in book printing. In its two web format, the T32 is mainly used for long run work. The combination of wide web and collect folders means more pages per signature, fewer make-readies thus more efficient bindery operation.

As explained by Sunil Goel, the Timson book press at Gopsons consists of reelstand, auto-splicer, tension control unit, web guide and printing units, oven, chill rolls and a ribbon folder.

The selection of the folding set-up in the book press is important as is the web width and printing direction. The web can be divided into 4 ribbons. Depending on the job, Gopsons operate in either 2, 3 or 4 ribbons. After printing, the sheets are collated on top of each other. The double circumference lengths are cut when they go in the folder. The Timson has given Gopsons enormous flexibility and speed in the handling of large volume book production and the company is evaluating the purchase of yet another Timson press.

Apart from Gopsons enhancement of capacity and continuous automation of its book production, important developments for this organisation include its international marketing and servicing efforts with a list of leading global publishers. In early 2009, Gopsons became the first Indian printer to achieve FSC certification for providing chain of custody proof that it is using environmentally sustainable paper inputs. The company’s mastery of book manufacturing and its commitment to book printing exports and large-scale expansion also make it an attractive target for forward looking private equity investors.

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