中文Family-owned German bindery Kern GmbH is doubling down on saddle-stitched products at a moment when many in the printing industry assume the format is in slow retreat. Based in Bexbach, near Saarbrucken in southwestern Germany, the company employs around 150 people and produces some 44 million bound copies a year. Perfect binding dominates its volume, roughly 40 million offset-printed softcovers annually on a KM 610A perfect binder, yet it is saddle stitching that the Kern brothers, managing directors Andre and Holger Kern, are steadily investing in. Their reasoning says a great deal about where print finishing is heading.
This coming late summer, Kern will install two new Primera PRO saddle stitchers from Muller Martini to replace an ageing Primera MC and an ST 450. The move is not about chasing volume for its own sake. It is about keeping pace with a market that has become far more demanding than the one Kern’s parents served a generation ago.
“Customers today expect very high quality, very short lead times, and competitive prices at the same time,” Andre Kern notes. That combination is hard. Saddle-stitched products, brochures, magazines, inserts, training manuals, industrial documentation, and pharmaceutical and informational print, are often slim, deadline-driven, and must be produced with extreme efficiency. The rise of digital print and shorter runs has only intensified the pressure: instead of a handful of long, predictable jobs, finishers now face a continuous stream of varied, fast-turnaround orders.
Product diversity at Kern has exploded. Formats range from classic A4 brochures to industrial and pharmaceutical documents with strict process-reliability requirements. Page counts swing from a few sheets to hundreds. Paper qualities vary. Special requirements pile up, ring-eyelet binding, dual-purpose applications, camera inspection, and highly precise trimming with exact dimensional accuracy. Pharmaceutical and industrial customers in particular demand that feeders, sheet sequence, completeness, and finishing be monitored reliably on every single copy.
The two new Primera PRO machines are configured almost identically, with one difference: one carries four flat-stack feeders in addition to the cover feeder, the other eight. Both keep six chain-driven bases, which lets Kern swap feeders between the two stitchers. Special accessories, double-sheet feeders and ring-eyelet stitching heads, are compatible across both, so in principle any job can run on either machine. “We decide which configuration makes the most economic sense depending on the job,” says Andre Kern. Simpler products run on the compact system; complex ones move to the larger. If needed, components are swapped, giving the plant flexibility to absorb sudden changes in order mix.
Kern’s five reasons for choosing Muller Martini’s Primeras PRO read like a checklist for modern finishing. First, industrial performance: the machines run in continuous three-shift operation, so availability, stability, and net output are decisive. Second, fast retooling, because product variety is extreme. Third, ease of use, Kern will train a dozen operators immediately, and modern interfaces mean a broad team can run the lines reliably rather than a few specialists. Fourth, long-term technological sustainability of the finishing operation. Fifth, the proven track record of the Primera MC it is retiring.
The brothers are candid that saddle stitching has gained importance at Kern not because softcover products have faded, but because the bar keeps rising. “The market demands high quality, very short lead times, and competitive prices. This can only be achieved with modern technology, stable processes, and high availability,” Holger Kern says. Production on the two new lines begins in August and September, and the owners expect the investment to lift productivity, handle more sophisticated products, and add flexibility across the board.
For printers and converters watching the dynamics of post-press, Kern’s bet is a useful signal. Saddle stitching is not dying, it is professionalizing. The shops that win will be those that treat finishing as a precision, data-monitored, rapidly reconfigurable operation rather than a back-room afterthought. As labor stays tight and customers demand more for less, investments like Kern’s two Primera PRO stitchers may well define who thrives in the bindery of the 2030s.
