Bindwel investment fuels book demand surge at CDC Printers

CDC Printers is in expansion mode. In 2022, the company added 50,000-sqft of working space to its facility, and purchased a number of machines, especially for the post-press segment. Do read the profile of Kolkata-based CDC Printers

15 Jul 2024 | By PrintWeek Team

Manu Choudhury of CDC Printers

Who: CDC Printers. Winner of four PrintWeek Awards in 2023 for book production.

Where: Kolkata. With a 1.5-lakh sqft factory that houses 35 machines which include a raft of web offset presses with multiple cut-offs and a series of multicolour printing machines, mostly Heidelberg.

What does CDC do: The company binds 250-300 titles per month in-house. Of these, 30 containers are shipped to Africa and Europe monthly.

Best book CDC has manufactured: CDC printed the Holy Quran last year on metallised paper. It is approximately 400 pgs of 9x13-inches. The book was awarded the best-printed product in 2023 at All India Federation of Master Printers' National Awards for Excellence in Printing. The binding process was extremely delicate.

CDC's preferred Bindwel kit: Many years ago, CDC started with the BW@2500, a six-clamp perfect binding machine. CDC also invested in a binding line from Wohlenberg called Lucro, that was installed and supported by the Bindwel team. Three years ago, when Bindwel launched their inline binding solutions called Bindlines, CDC was one of the early adopters. Today, CDC has two lines, centered around the Freedom 5K perfect binders from Bindwel.

What does the BW@2500 do? It is a basic perfect binding machine and it does wonders. Way beyond the look, the budget and its simplicity.

Who is the BW@2500 intended for? It is intended for any print company that wishes to have an in-house binding setup (that means every printing company on the planet). Probably not the best solution for digital printers, but for everybody else, this is a must-have equipment.

What is the USP of the BW@2500? It is so simple and perfect at what it does. No whims and fancies. Just perfect.

How easy is the BW@2500 to operate? It's probably simpler than using WhatsApp on a smartphone.

How does the Bindwel team fill the gap between pre-press and despatch? If we were to map the process of book printing in simple steps, it would be as follows:

  1. Pre-press
  2. Press
  3. Post-press
  4. Packing
  5. Despatch

Bindwel can take care of steps three and four completely and wholeheartedly. One would wonder why people say, that starting a printing factory requires a huge amount of capital.

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