How is a Calendar born?

Customers often ask us how a calendar is actually made. Is that something that you are curious about, too? Join us now in Jedovnice, at our bookbinding centre and the place where calendars are made.

The “Calendar” family

POINT CZ has specialised in the production of calendars for 30 years. We are the largest producer of calendars in the Czech Republic, printing 10 million each year for the largest publishers in the Czech Republic, Germany and Austria. It’s just… we know a lot about calendars.

How it all begins 

The “prenatal” period of the calendar takes place at our business centre in Brno. This is where calendar orders are processed, print data are checked and print layout takes place. This consists in arranging the individual calendar pages on a B1 sheet. Specialists from pre-press are also responsible for deftly utilising space and saving consumption. They fold the calendar sheets and combine them so that there is no “overplus“ (blank spaces) on the sheet of paper.

And here comes the press 

The prepared sheets then fly digitally from Brno to our printing plant in Medlov. Here, the data on the CTP machine are laser-etched into an aluminium printing plate. These plates go into the hands of master printers and are printed on Heidelberg offset presses at a speed of 15,000 sheets per hour.

Calendars are also printed on digital presses, depending on the type and cost. Dealers also lend a hand by providing advice and calculations. In Medlov, the sheets are printed and the surface of the materials, such as lamination, partial varnishes and die-cutting, is further refined.

Final touches 

The printed sheets then make their way 50 km from Medlov to Jedovnice near Blansko, where the large-capacity bookbinding centre of the POINT CZ printing company is located. Here the calendars are assembled, packed and shipped.

Cutting sheets

The printed sheets are cut into individual sheets in Jedovnice. Did you know that one B1 sheet can hold four A3 calendar sheets, i.e. for one A3 calendar including the title and overview sheets you need 4 sheets of paper?

In a single machine pass

The individual sheets are inserted into a “collating machine”, which stacks them on top of each other. A wall calendar is collated from the back, from December to January, title page, overview page and back. When all the sheets are on top of one other, the perforation is done, the ring binder and hook are inserted and the twin binding is closed. All this happens in a single pass through the machine. As a last action, the machine rotates the calendar so that the back covers the overview sheet. The title page of the calendar is at the top and the twin closure, which is hidden at the back of the calendar, is turned.

The calendar is launched 

The Renz IL750 line produces a complete wall calendar from printed sheets in one pass at a speed of 550 wall calendars per hour. The calendars are then packed manually into bags and stacked on a pallet. We can produce wall calendars up to A2 format, with both ring binding and panel board. We print desk calendars with up to 72 sheets and complete them with all types of small stands (full bottom, with lock, with plaster fastener). The production speed on one line is 1,250 desk calendars per hour. Within our production you can also find multi-month, planning calendars, notebooks, diaries and other products with twin-wire binding.

Calendar services 

For the production of calendars, POINT CZ offers comprehensive services such as printing and die-cutting of the backing cardboard, panel board or the small stand. We can arrange additional printing, corner rounding, indexing, machine and manual assembly, direct mailing, dropshipping, warehousing and just-in-time delivery.

We can also cope with industrial and non-standard orders. Contact our specialists in calendar production. We will be happy to prepare a quotation for you. Are you interested in more articles on the topic of calendars? Read this in our blog: “What you might not know about calendars”

Text: Markéta Švábová