MBO America

Vendors reported a good amount of interest in bindery equipment at this year's GRAPH EXPO in Chicago. The bindery equipment at the show offered in-plants some great opportunities to expand their services and increase their efficiency.

Since Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in 2005, hurricane preparedness in the region has gone to a whole new level. The Mississippi Department of Transportation is making a concerted effort to keep its Gulf Coast residents aware of what to do in the event of an approaching storm by raising awareness in the coastal region.

UNT Printing & Distribution has a range of sophisticated offset and digital printing capabilities. Here's a glimpse.

“Cracking was a huge problem for us,” reveals Gordon Rivera, coordinator of Campus Graphics at Allan Hancock College. He would cringe each time a nice four-color brochure came out of the shop’s Xerox DocuColor 250, went through its Challenge SRA3 tabletop folder and emerged with cracked toner on the folds. This wasn’t the professional-looking work Rivera wanted to be handing to customers at the Santa Maria, Calif.-based public community college. 

To get the word out about its new MBO buckle folder with a rollaway knife unit, the Document Solutions department at the University of Texas (UT) at Austin created a video showcasing the new folder's capabilities. The video, which the in-plant put on YouTube and on its Web site, focused on the shop's "Three E's"—experience, expertise and equipment.

Though inkjet presses may have stolen some of the thunder, new bindery equipment was everywhere at Graph Expo. The crowds were consistently large in the bindery booths, and vendors were very upbeat about the show.

The University of Texas at Austin produced a video to show off its new MBO buckle folder and tout the in-plant's "Three E's"—experience, expertise and equipment.

A sudden workload increase came when cosmetics company Mary Kay Inc. shifted the printing and folding of product inserts from outside printing suppliers to the company's in-plant facility in Carrollton, Texas. "It hit us like a ton of bricks" recalls Keith Hopson. "We didn't know it was coming until we were flooded with work."

IPG Editor Bob Neubauer takes a road trip through Oregon, visiting three in-plants along the way.

“OUR PRIMARY focus really is color,” declares Dallas Johnson, from his office at the University of California-Riverside. “We’ve moved away from black and white. We saw that as sort of a dying market…still see it that way.” With 35 years of printing experience to guide him, Johnson thinks he has a pretty good idea where the industry is headed. So when the director of Service Enterprises decided to move his in-plant away from the “dying” monochrome market and into the more promising world of color printing, he did it in a big way.