AG/CAD delivers savings to mail printer

With eight facilities and almost 1,400 staff in the UK, DST is one of the most prestigious print and packaging manufacturers in the British Isles. As with any industry-leading manufacturer, DST invests in the latest technological advances to maintain its competitive instinct. This recently included the acquisition of a DYSS X5-1310T sample-making/digital cutter from AG/CAD.

Putting DST into perspective, the company produces over one billion statement images each year; it is responsible for 836 million posted mail packs that sees every UK household receive a DST printed mail every 13 days. Furthermore, the company picks and packs over 828,000 items each month, and its customer base reads like a ‘who’s who’ of the retail, banking and service sectors. Dealing with such quantities, it is no surprise the company’s busy design department at the 120,000sq/ft Nottingham facility needed to upgrade its ageing sample cutting machine to a state-of-the-art DYSS X5 digital cutter.

Discussing the justification of buying a new cutting machine, product development manager, Steve Hutchinson, said: “Like any large company, we needed to investigate and justify our choice of supplier and machine. With a design department that creates over 10,000 design samples every year, reliability was a critical factor.

“The new cutting table would replace an old Studio Sampler cutting machine that AG/CAD supplied in 1999. As we had been using AG/CAD’s KASEMAKE CAD package in conjunction with the machine for over 15 years, we were confident of AG/CAD’s outstanding products and technical support. This proven support mechanism and equipment reliability was a key factor in our purchasing decision.”

The original machine that was replaced by the DYSS was continually cutting from 70 to 350gsm paper as well as folding boxboard. However, with a diverse product range, DST needed a more precise, flexible and also robust solution for making leaflets, booklets and mailers from 70 to 350gsm, and packaging from folding boxboard up to 750micron range.

“The DYSS X5 comfortably processes everything we do,” continued Hutchinson. “Furthermore, the K-Cut Digital Camera Vision System ensures we have more precise cutting, as it identifies the registration marks on printed jobs to give us impeccable accuracy levels. This allows us to precisely check duplex print back-ups for the production department, saving time and increasing accuracy. We also convert die cut proofs for production jobs, due to the high precision of the machine.

“From a productivity standpoint, the DYSS X5 is considerably faster than its predecessor. This has reduced bottlenecks and improved throughput for our busy design department.”