At drupa 2012, Aldo and Mauro Adario, owners of Italian print shop Varigrafica Alto Lazio north of Rome, decided to purchase a fully automatic Stahlfolder KH 82 combination folding machine and a Eurobind 1300 PUR Line adhesive binder from Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG (Heidelberg). Father and son are thus moving their print shop into high-quality finishing. The new acquisitions will enable them to perform in-house finishing for short runs in particular and to ship directly.

For many years, Varigrafica with its 80 employees has been printing high-quality annual reports, brochures, and labels for leading Italian companies from the telecommuni-cations, banking, insurance, automobile association, food, and mineral water sectors. Varigrafica already has folding machines, die cutters, and cutters from Heidelberg and Polar. However, particularly high-end and sophisticated adhesive binding has until now continued to be outsourced. "With the drupa investment, this will change," explains Managing Director Mauro Adario. "The fully automatic Stahlfolder KH 82 combination folding machine is set up in no time at all and can therefore fold many different short runs per shift with very high folding accuracy, even when working with difficult paper types." These runs then undergo adhesive binding immediately afterwards. The runs are between 500 and 2,000 copies. "The new Eurobind 1300 adhesive binder will also be able to process very thin brochures, thanks to PUR technology. And as the Eurotrim 1000 three-knife trimmer is connected to the adhesive binder directly inline, the brochures are ready for shipment immediately after binding," says the delighted Managing Director.

The two company owners didn't make their decision until drupa, once they had checked all the relevant suppliers. "The Heidelberg trade show presentation impressed us, as it integrated all postpress machines into real production environments - from prepress and press to the finished brochure," explains senior partner Aldo Adario. "We also attach particular importance to getting explanations directly from the machine operators - from the people that know." And his son Mauro adds: "The Stitchmaster ST 500 saddlestitcher was completely new to us and can now also be used for pre-gathering book blocks for adhesive binding. This machine thus fits in perfectly with our Eurobind 1300 adhesive binder and we'll be taking a closer look at it again in a few months."