Media&News

Hongbo Haotian – asterPRO Full Cycle, automatic book sewing machine

Hongbo Haotian – asterPRO Full Cycle, automatic book sewing machine
Case study
09 Jun 2020

Highly efficient children books production with asterPRO Full Cycle

Hongbo Haotian is a large-scale Chinese printing company, established in 2010 in Beijing with the goal of servicing the metropolitan area of the capital city where publishing houses are flourishing.

Hongbo’s main products are high-end art and photo albums and children's books, the latter a strong and thriving market in China. The company, already a customer of Meccanotecnica since 2014 with an asterEVO book sewing machine, decided to increase its production capacity for thread sewn books with an asterPRO Full Cycle to meet the increasing market demand in this segment.

The children’s book segment in 2019 accounts for 26,5% of China’s total book retail market, according to Beijing-based OpenBook, a clearinghouse for publishing statistics. The segment expanded 18,5% compared to 2018, confirming a double-digit growth streak.

Whether this growth trajectory is due to the sheer number of people under 18 (about 370 million and counting) and newborns (14,65 million in 2019) or its rising middle class (around 400 million people) with higher disposable income to spend on education and reading, it is seemingly unstoppable.

(From the article: “Children’s Books in China 2020: Looking Ahead” published in April 2020 by Publishers Weekly).

Challenge

“In the last years we are witnessing a big growth for thread sewn children books”, says Mrs. Liu, Managing Director of Hongbo Haotian. “Children’s literature is in big demand and we had the need to increase our productivity while maintaining the high quality of sewing of the aster machines”.

SOLUTION

Hongbo Haotian decided to invest in an asterPRO with Full Cycle technology that allows the sewing of books without the blind/lock stitch. The investment decision has been guided by 3 main reasons:

1. The Full Cycle Technology allows to increase production efficiency, saving costs and improving profitability, compared to traditional sewing machines.

2. This technology also improves the daily output, increasing productivity especially for books with a low number of signatures.

3. Aster machines are easy to use and having operators already trained in using them have also played its role in the decision.

RESULTS

“In only 5 months after installations, we have sewn 20 million signatures and produced millions of books”, says Mrs. Liu. “This proves the great reliability of the system that has fulfilled our expectations”.

5 key business benefits

asterPRO Full Cycle gives 5 key business benefits:

  1. Highly reliable binding (thread sewing);
  2. Revenue increase (more productivity - no lock/blind stitch);
  3. Cost savings (higher efficiency - full cycle technology);
  4. Ease-of-use (aster machines);
  5. Sewing quality (no thermal fusion).

Linked to

Media&News

Any Questions?

If you have any questions, feel free to call us.

+49 (0)6151/9284-0
Contact Us

Request information