Key insights in this article:
- Book printers are facing higher speeds, shorter runs and fewer available operators
- These conditions make manual roll changes a growing bottleneck in production
- Half-used rolls rarely get consumed, tying up capital and creating waste
- Continuous roll handling keeps the press running and uses every roll to the core
- Contiweb automation boosts output, improves ergonomics and stabilises workflow planning
Skilled labour shortages in book printing are reshaping production priorities
Every book printer with a web inkjet press has probably asked the same question: does it make sense to invest in auto-splicers? The answer evolves with the market. Press speeds have increased dramatically, run lengths have become shorter and operators are increasingly difficult to find. These changes make automation far more valuable than it was even a few years ago.
Across North America and Europe, printers are experiencing a structural shortage of trained staff. More skilled workers are retiring than entering the trade, and physically demanding tasks — such as pushing heavy paper rolls, manually taping webs and threading presses — are increasingly difficult to staff.
Book printers want to deploy their scarce operators where they add value: overseeing print quality, supporting finishing and maintaining stable workflow. Manual roll handling does not contribute to any of these goals. It takes operators away from the line, introduces physical strain and creates production interruptions that affect delivery commitments.
Automation is therefore not merely a choice for improving productivity. It is becoming essential for sustaining production capacity at a time when labour availability is shrinking.
Why short-run inkjet book production requires uninterrupted uptime
The book market continues to show modest but stable growth. What has changed dramatically is how books must be manufactured. Publishers favour shorter runs, personalization, more frequent replenishment and minimal warehousing. On-demand workflows and book-of-one production are now common.
Inkjet technology has enabled this shift. A growing number of book printers can now produce more titles in smaller quantities at high quality and competitive cost. But the price of that responsiveness is operational complexity. More titles, more job changes and more substrate changes mean more roll changes — often at moments that are operationally inconvenient.
In a market where speed is the expectation, a press that stops repeatedly during the day simply cannot keep up with those demands.
Faster inkjet presses make roll-change downtime more expensive than ever
Web inkjet presses have become significantly faster over the years. Today’s systems operate at speeds between 80 and 410 metres per minute (260–1,345 ft/min), with around 150 m/min (≈500 ft/min) now typical in book production. Finishing systems have advanced in parallel, enabling continuous movement downstream.
As speeds increase, rolls are consumed more quickly. With manual changeovers, it’s the roll — not the operator, planning, or workflow — that decides when the press must stop. And every stop brings both production and revenue to zero.
The figure below shows how long a full roll actually lasts at different press speeds with typical book papers. Take a look at the chart to see just how quickly a roll runs out in your own production reality.
At 150 metres per minute (≈500 ft/min), a 1270mm (≈50-inch) roll typically runs out after about 60 minutes, depending on paper grade and core diameter. A manual changeover generally results in about fifteen minutes of downtime. Over an eight-hour shift, that can mean five or more interruptions — roughly seventy-five minutes of lost production every shift. And if your press runs faster, even more production time is lost.
No sellable books are produced during those stops. Operators are occupied with physically demanding work, and when finishing is inline, the entire downstream process has to pause and wait. The loss of production time only gets worse when using partial rolls.
Why book printers plan to use partial paper rolls… but reality gets in the way
Even with careful planning, short lead times and urgent requests often force printers to interrupt the ideal job sequence. Substrate changes then occur before a roll is fully consumed, leaving partially used rolls that are removed with the intention of returning to them later.
The second figure below shows how little productive time remains once a roll has been reduced to half its original diameter.
At first glance, it might seem that a half-diameter roll still contains half the paper, but that’s not the case. Because roll length depends on both diameter and paper thickness, a roll reduced to 50% of its original diameter typically contains only about 20–25% of the paper length for common book grades.
At typical book production speeds of 150 metres per minute — roughly 500 feet per minute — a half-diameter roll provides only 15 to 21 minutes of printing time, depending on the paper grade. A manual roll change still requires around fifteen minutes from slowdown to full-speed production again, meaning the interruption delivers almost as much downtime as runtime.
Operators understandably hesitate to use these rolls, especially when production pressure is high and roll changes are already frequent. Many half-diameter rolls are set aside with the intention of returning to them later. In practice, they are often not reused because the effort of mounting them — and the resulting standstill — is hardly worth the limited amount of paper left. In addition, operators often don’t know exactly how much paper remains on a partial roll or whether it will be enough to complete the next job. As a result, a large proportion never make it back onto the unwinder. They take up warehouse space, tie up working capital and ultimately become waste.
How non-stop unwinding turns lost time into sellable books
Automation changes the economics of roll handling. Instead of planning production around roll depletion, slowing the press, cutting the web and restarting the line, the changeover simply disappears from the workflow. With a solution such as the Contiweb CD-N Non-Stop Unwinder, the web is spliced at full production speed, so the press keeps running, operators stay at the console, and every roll is consumed to the core.
A book printer that currently loses more than an hour of uptime per shift can turn that time into productive output. Those reclaimed minutes translate directly into more sellable books, higher throughput and shorter delivery cycles — without hiring additional staff or extending shifts.
The hidden productivity benefits of Contiweb’s auto-splicers
Beyond eliminating downtime, non-stop unwinding also improves day-to-day operation on the shop floor. With the Contiweb CD-N, ergonomic reel loading allows reels to be positioned from ground level using motorized lift arms — no crane required. A splice can be prepared in just two minutes, and with consistent splice reliability of 99.8% or higher, the transition is not only fast — it is predictable. That reliability is what turns automation from a technical upgrade into a planning advantage: operators can focus on print quality and workflow, not on whether the next changeover will interrupt production.
Calculate your own uptime gains
Want to see how many production hours your press could recover next year?
Use the Winding Savings Calculator — it only takes a few inputs to reveal how many extra hours of book production are currently being lost to manual roll changes.
