Educavalor is the book printing and binding business vertical of the Noveduca group of Luanda, Angola, Africa. The group is promoted by three brothers and is focused on manufacturing and distributing products for schools – be it benches or exercise note books. The company also has a commercial printing plant in the capital city of Luanda.
Two years ago in 2022, the group set up its green field project for printing and binding textbooks in the city of Benguela, about 400 Km away from the capital. Benguela in western Angola and the capital of the Benguela province is one of the country’s most populous cities with a population of above 5 lakh.
Educavalor is headed by the group director Miguel Lopes. The main printing machines include a 560 mm cut off Citiline from Manugraph and a four color printer from Heidelberg, in addition to a few single color machines. The binding department is centered around a Bindwel mini Bindline — a unique 2000 books per inline binder. At the heart of this line is the Freedom 2K fully automatic perfect binder, which can change from one format to any other in less than 1 minute. “We have production requirements of about 20,000 books per day; however the formats can be varied and we will need to turn around jobs very quickly. That is the reason we went for this unique solution from Bindwel India” says Miguel Lopes.
The Freedom 2K mini Bindline was supplied along with Signa 4000 12 station gatherer, a Freedom 2K perfect binder and an inline connected to the Trimit 30C trimmer. The full line occupies 50% of the space required for a 5,000 books per hour Bindline.
“The Freedom series from Bindwel has no limitations to formats, lots and runs. The binders – both the 2K and 5K series – can turn around very fast and will handle a huge range of formats. Based on the customer needs, we can suggest either 2K or 5K, with the same performance guarantees. In the future, if the requirement for throughputs go up, we have the freedom of just swapping the binder, adding a spiral conveyor and thus meeting the demands”, says Sudheeran V Nair of Bindwel, who heads the operations for African market from Dubai. He and Linto Joseph cover the whole African continent, working closely with business associates in many countries. The first level of service is provided from a nearby hub, backed up by Nairobi and Dubai as the case may be.
“In drupa, as we present the spectrum of innovation creating the future of bookbinding, we will be showcasing ‘Freedom’ along with ‘Insta’- the one book model and ‘Ekam’ – the bookbinding process line. At hall number 6 B-04, will be on show the three distinct ideas that will go on to shape the way books will be made in the future,” Kai Buentemeyer, director of the Bindwel-Stelda group.
With ‘Insta’ we are proud to put India in the one book model map, after Germany, Switzerland, Japan and Italy. Ekam is akin to the lean production philosophy that is designed for a specific, yet popular ‘standard range’ of book formats. To illustrate the potential of Ekam, Bindwel will showcase a transfer module together with the Freedom binding line at drupa. With this simple module, it will be possible to demonstrate the elimination of waste and the imposition of flow, two fundamental principles well known to the Lean community, the inspiration behind the Ekam approach. Among the numerous guises of waste, waste of space has been one of the costliest for printing factories. Bindwel shows how Ekam can reduce space requirements by 50%. Together with space, the number of machine parts is reduced and maintenance cost, energy consumption as well as waste of overproduction, waste of unnecessary motions, waste of transporting, and waste of defects. And the third part of the spectrum is ‘Freedom’ – which is not bound by any lots, runs or formats,” says Buentemeyer from his town of Rahden of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Buentemyer has been guiding the Bindwel team in India in addressing the changing requirements of book printing globally.
