A significant part of an investment programme that has involved changing production from litho printing to digital output has led the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office (UKHO) to install the very latest folding technology from MBO that offers ‘totally dynamic’ folding. The two new MBO T1420 large format folders were both supplied by UK & Ireland agent, Friedheim International.
2 X MBO T1420 large format folders @ UKHO
Tom Scott-Clarke, UKHO’s Supply Operations Manager, says: “We are in the middle of a major re-organisation that has involved the printing of our publications being outsourced (to Latimer Trend), and the printing of all of our charts changing to be produced digitally.
“As regards the charts themselves, instead of 100’s of variations we have had in the past, we have now reduced this to 14 sizes, as well as a few ‘bespoke’ options, and the greater flexibility provided by the combination of digital printing and the two new MBO T 1420 large format folders now allows us to keep batch sizes down to around 20, as well as being able to ‘custom’ produce even single copies at short notice when requested.”
Based in Taunton, Somerset, the UKHO is responsible for the worldwide distribution of nautical publications and services for the Royal Navy, merchant shipping and individual mariners, with the specific aim of protecting lives at sea. With a staff of around 1000, work at the UKHO involves assessing incoming hydrographic data immediately for vital safety information. Urgent updates are issued as Navigational Warnings or chart-updating Notices to Mariners (NMs). On average, more than 2000 Navigational Warnings and 8000 Notices to Mariners are issued by the UKHO per annum.
The UKHO first began discussing folding options with MBO a couple of years ago, as Tom Scott-Clarke explains: “There can be great complexity in folding the charts, with copies of various sizes being quite common. The technology we required existed in MBO’s smaller folders, but not at the time in its large format versions. The task therefore became one of adapting the technology to large format, and this is what MBO has achieved for us with the two T1420 folders.
MBO provided a bespoke solution to the UKHO’s specialist needs….
“Both folders can take a sheet direct from their respective wide format digital colour printers (HP SmartStream), de-curl it, and by reading a code that tells how the sheet should be folded, are capable of producing a different type of folded sheet, one after the other, every six seconds!
“The whole process of adapting the folding technology to our requirements and matching it to the digital output may have taken a couple of years to perfect, but it has been worthwhile in the substantial time savings we are achieving as a result.”
