A group of UK book printers visited DPG printing company in Germany this week (14-15 November) to see the world's first installed Muller Martini Diamant MC Hybrid bookline in action.

The Diamant MC Hybrid and Diamant MC Digital study tour was designed to demonstrate how the Hybrid bookline, launched last November, could respond to the demands of combining short run conventional hardback book production with photobook work.

Representatives from CPI UK, CEWE, Letts and Colorman Ireland, were shown that the machine combines the most useful features of the Diamant MC Digital and the Diamant MC 60/35.

A rounding and backing station ensures that conventional hardback books are produced efficiently and to a high standard, while the Diamante’s tandem headbanding station allows printers to swap quickly between shortrun jobs where different headband colours are required.

Owner of DPG, Oliver Schimeck, explained that the installation of the Diamant MC Hybrid bookline three months ago was designed to avoid bottlenecks in their book binding department, which would have occurred after the installation of an Oce ColorStream 3500 press.

The Hybrid model was best for their hardcover book department, he explained, because its high production speeds can cope with the schoolbooks and instruction manuals printed on the Oce press, while the Hybrid’s automatically adjusting casing-in mechanisms are ideal for producing photobooks of varying sizes.

"We produce 70,000 photobooks a year," said Schimeck, "which isn’t a huge number relatively speaking but it was a significant factor in investing in the Hybrid. Because photobook work is seasonal, it’s really useful to have a machine that can quickly process digital books for high demand times like Christmas, then used for conventional work the rest of the year."

Although there are two other Hybrid booklines now installed in Germany, and ten worldwide, no UK printer has yet invested in the machine.

Barry Tinton, commercial digital print development manager at CEWE, said: "It is an amazing machine but I think the UK is not quite ready for it. From CEWE’s perspective, the commercial side of things is still very much in its infancy so it would have to pay for itself on the back of the photobook production.

"Because the UK hasn’t taken to the photobook as well as Germany yet, we just don’t have the volume to justify the cost of the machine."

CPI’s UK project manager Martin Clegg added that CPI also do not experience high enough demand for photobooks to justify a Hybrid machine. He said: "We also don’t do our short run manufacturing and photobooks in the same location so the Hybrid would be very difficult to justify at the moment, although I wouldn’t rule it out as a future investment."

Although he agreed that the UK photobook market was several years behind the German one, product manager at Muller Martini David McGinlay said that the company expected to get an installation in the UK within the next year.