Berea Brings Perfect Binding In-house

As the costs of outsourcing perfect binding crept upward, Melvin Cooper knew it was time for his in-plant to take control. So earlier this year, Berea College Printing Services installed a Spiel Sterling Digibinder Plus, bringing perfect binding capabilities in-house, decreasing costs and improving turnaround times.

Cooper, director of the Berea, KY, in-plant, says his decision was based largely on two quarterly booklets that Printing Services had been tasked with producing. Bringing the Digibinder on board, Cooper explains, would reduce the cost and speed up the production on these booklets.

“Our binding costs kept inching up and we kind of lost control,” he says. “It would take two weeks to get [an outsourced job] back sometimes.”

Not only has the Digibinder allowed the in-plant to improve productivity, it has provided a stream of new work as well. Printing Services has brought in a Civil War novel from a local author, an autobiography and a poetry book thanks to the Digibinder. Without perfect binding capabilities, Cooper says there’s no way the in-plant could have accepted these jobs.

“I just couldn’t be competitive if we had to outsource the binding of this novel or the poetry book,” he states. “We just could not have been competitive and we wouldn’t have done them.”