Prior to commissioning the Pantera, JKJ Bokbinderi was producing around 3.5 million softcover products each year, using a second-hand Muller Martini Monobloc perfect binder that was purchased in 2001 to replace a Pony system. Since the Pantera was installed just under two years ago, annual production output has increased to over five million copies without any change in headcount, which is something of an achievement in a turbulent economic climate. Jimmy and Johan Ahlrik, two brothers who founded this family business with their father Jan-Åke Ahlrik in 1993, proudly reveal that: “While other companies in Sweden are reporting declining production figures, we have managed to generate an increase in orders on hand despite these tough times.”

Brothers Jimmy (center) and Johan Ahlrik (left) run family business JKJ Bokbinderi AB in Falköping. On the right is Hans Lilja, Sales Representative for Muller Martini Nordic.

Most Substantial Investment in 17 Years
As important as the total output of brochures, catalogs, books and some periodically published magazines is to the company, that is just one facet of this machinery investment, which is the most significant in the company's 17-year history. As well as increasing total output, perfect binding, thread sewing and fold specialist JKJ has boosted the number of titles it produces (from 300 to 400), increased its customer base (which covers an area of some 150 kilometers) and, more importantly, gained greater flexibility.

Reliability and flexibility are particularly important to JKJ; the former because there is no second perfect binder to fall back on, and the latter because the company and its staff of ten cover a broad range of production runs – producing anything from 500 to 300,000 copies, with the average for each job being 10,000 copies. “This means we may need to change over the perfect binding line up to six times each day,” stresses Johan Ahlrik. “And it goes without saying that the process is eminently faster with the user-friendly Pantera than it was with the predecessor model.”

The quick setup time really comes into its own if a customer is keen to see a sample before production gets underway. “In the past, meeting requests like this involved considerable effort,” says Jimmy Ahlrik.

Thinner than the Machine ‘Permits’
With the current setup, JKJ can also ensure that it is able to fulfill any special customer requirement, as the Pantera can tackle even the most unusual of requests. For example: JKJ recently produced a run of 200,000 copies of a 20-page, 1.6-mm thick brochure for a university, despite the fact that the Pantera is actually designed to accommodate a minimum product thickness of 2 mm. The thickest book produced to date, a product catalog with a run of 15,000 copies, measured 40 mm. In addition, JKJ has also produced a leather-bound booklet for a Swedish automotive company, with a smooth workflow from gathering machine to perfect binder.

Machinery experts Jimmy and Johan Ahlrik attended a demonstration of similar production processes at a Muller Martini plant and were impressed by what they saw. “After that we were in no doubt that the Pantera was the right machine for our needs,” they said. And it was not just the perfect binder itself (with its book block feeder, handfeeding station, Esprit three-knife trimmer and CB 16 counter stacker) that so delighted the brothers; specifically, they were keen to experience the 16-station gathering machine with Asir 3 automatic signature image recognition and a criss-cross system. “In terms of quality assurance, the Asir 3 is an important selling point for us,” says Jimmy Ahlrik.

“Showing what we can do”
Another dimension is that very few of the signatures delivered by the printing houses have a bar code. “We already regularly draw our customers’ attention to the benefits of using a bar code”, stresses Johan Ahlrik. “But in the future it will become even more important to create a culture of mutual dialog with our customers and really show them what our perfect binder can do.” Currently, JKJ is only using a hotmelt process. As the Pantera is also equipped for PUR processing, however, the company regularly reminds customers of the drawbacks of hotmelt processing.