Blackpool Printer Seals Premier League Status with Ipex AFC Buy

Saturday 22 May, the warmest day of the year so far and his team in the Wembley play-off final for the Premiership, so Dave Moulton’s family outing was to… Ipex, where else? Because the Moulton’s are not the average family– they have ink in their veins and print in their DNA.

Blackpool’s Moulton Printing was set up by Dave’s parents in 1927 and one of the reasons for his Ipex visit was to help pave the way for daughters, Cassandra and Helen (pictured above on the Horizon Ipex stand with Dave), to take up the reins:

“I am so proud of the way they’ve taken to the business; their levels of proficiency and energy are amazing,” says Mr Moulton. “They have mastered just about every process and absolutely nothing fazes them… apart from the folding!”

Folding is crucial for Moulton Printing because one of its major contracts is a 150,000 A2 to A4 crossfold, repeated regularly throughout the year. “We have been managing with a faithful old GUK, which is fine – except I’m the only one who can set it up,” explains Dave. “When you have runs of that length so frequently – we’ve produced 800,000 in the last eight weeks – it’s inevitable that you’ll need to break in for urgent shorter runs – so we came to Ipex to look at the new generation of automated machines we’ve heard so much about.”

After a thorough assessment of the leading brands on demonstration, the Horizon AFC-566F won the IPEX play-off final. Daughter Cassandra explains: “The operator interface is really straightforward and the job store and recall functions are exactly what we need. The ability to fine-tune from the touchscreen while the machine is on-the-run is another big plus; it even seems to be quieter than the others… we just fell in love with it!”

Moultonprinting.com is a dyed-in-the-wool Sakurai house and operates a Perfecta Guillotine supplied, like the new Horizon, by IFS.