Happy faces: customer and manufacturer: Dominique Haudiquet, managing director at Laballery (second from right) with (from left) Daniel Risbourque, technical director at Muller Martini France, along with Mike Loepfe, Günther Silberbauer and Dragan Volic from Muller Martini onDemand Solutions.

The trend towards smaller print runs is also growing in France. That is why Nouvelle Imprimerie Laballery in Clamecy, south of Auxerre, wants to manufacture future soft cover products, with prints runs of between approximately 200 and 800 copies, on the new Muller Martini Sigmaline. The range of products to be manufactured covers mostly non-fiction books and reference books on health, psychology or management, but also for sciences and law. The company, which was originally founded in 1924, was re-launched in 1993 as a production cooperative and now has around 57 workers with an annual turnover of approximately €8 million.

The installation provides a SigmaLine total solution which contains all processes from digital print (NIPSON VaryPress400) from folding and gathering to perfect binding and trimming. In addition, this system uses the integrated SigmaControl line control. This combines and coordinates all the process, job and service management functions and assumes the fully automatic setting-up of the entire system via JDF.

Dominique Haudiquet, managing director at Laballery, made it clear that they were only interested in a complete inline solution for their short-run production.  She confidently explained, “Muller Martini is the only manufacturer to offer a one-stop total solution with its SigmaLine. There is no other system anywhere as highly automated or which uses such a line control, allowing us to operate the machine with only one operator. Production with the new system is planned for July 2007 and will ensure our survival in the market.”