case study

Update and Collate

Watkiss collator at London inplant keeps growing

Lovells (formerly Lovell, White, Durrant) is a 200-year old firm of solicitors with offices worldwide, and three premises in London. The latest investment at its inplant in Holborn is a twin-tower Watkiss Vario collator with a stitch/fold/trim unit, which has now been upgraded to include 14 bins, four more than its original 10 station configuration.

The Lovells inplant handles over 3,000,000 A4 sheets per month through its photocopiers alone. Prior to the Vario installation, collating was mainly handled in-line through two DocuTech machines, but the flexibility of a stand-alone system proved attractive to Reprographics Manager Ron Adams and his team. "The Vario offers a wider range of collating and finishing options, plus we can run it while the DocuTechs start printing the next job," he says.

"We first heard about the Vario through the recommendation of another user," continues Mr Adams. "We were happy to learn it's the most compact system on the market. Space is at such a premium here, out of necessity almost every machine and work surface in the building is on wheels! We chose a suction-fed machine because we regularly produce documents with a 200gsm cover, and we couldn't find another collator which could handle heavy stocks so well."

The department produces legal documents of all kinds for Lovells and its clients, some as large as 56 pages, and all requiring fast, efficient and professional production. "The Vario has made a big difference not only to productivity, but also to the finished look of the product. The stitch/fold/trim unit has a knife which is as good as any guillotine we've used - not having a clean cut can ruin a job. We have upgraded to 14 bins to better cope with the demand the Vario has created - word has got around, and now everyone knows the difference the Vario makes, they all want to take advantage of it."

"We've been very impressed by Watkiss from the outset," says Mr Adams. "They encourage feedback about their machines, and have come back with solutions to the most minor comments, even when we haven't expected them to."