Minneapolis, MN November 2007 - Publishers send out multiple subscription renewal offers, many of them "versioned" for target subscriber groups.  Until now, they have been forced to send these out as separate individual mailings, often at first-class postage rates.
The new system permits pre-sorted personalized and inserted envelopes to be fed and tipped onto the selected publication.  The breakthrough is that the feeding and tipping system can process envelopes of different sizes and thicknesses, yet tip them accurately onto the desired location on the publication.  A camera system scans the address area of the envelope and can trigger multiple publication feeders so that the correct publication and envelope will always "match".  A second camera station, which also controls final postal sortation and bundle building, verifies the match.
The system was a joint development venture between FAST Technology Group, LLC of Glen Carbon, Illinois, and Longford International, Ltd. of Toronto, Canada.  It can be retrofitted to almost any gathering system, binder, collator, or polywrapper.  In certain areas, the combined publication and envelope must be polywrapped.  The complete system has been put into production, recently completing a run of 2.3 million publications.  Finishing Resources, Inc. served as the project manager.