The raft of Polar equipment which was installed last week includes a jogger, pile turner, Transomat downloaders and weighing scales, said bindery manager Marcus Partridge.

Stephens & George has three Polar 115XT guillotines, but only two had the Polar handling kit, Partridge explained.

“Two of the three lines had the kit, meaning the standalone Polar became just backup,” he said. “This should improve our productivity by around 20%.

“We wanted parity across all three lines, so made this investment. It gives us capacity to cover cutting throughput even during peak periods. It’s a slick and smart way to work.”

He said that materials handling increased the productivity of the cutter, freeing guillotine operators to cut more sheets by reducing the manual handling involved. Partridge said that it had the added advantage of boosting confidence in accurately quantifying all products that were cut.

He added that the company in Merthyr Tydfil planned to further improve efficiency by installing Heidelberg Postpress Manager to link up with its current MIS and help with shop-floor data collection.