Finishing

Finishing or Forwarding in the printing industries includes all the necessary operations to transform printed paper into finished products.

The major finishing operations include trimming, folding, creasing, collating, signature stitching, numbering, softcover and hardcover binding.

Without finishing, a printed document could not be handled, understood and used by its final user. Finishing operations allow foldout pages to be folded, books to be bound, magazine pages to be assembled in the correct order, and labels to be cut to size. 

Finishing also includes operations providing embellishments and ornamentations on printed materials, such as embossing, varnishing, or gilding.

Today finishing operations are more and more automated, and in order to meet an increasingly complex demand, they are more and more computerized. Finishing solutions can be disconnected from printing machines (off-line finishing), or directly connected to printing machines (in-line finishing), or connected to production flows (near-line finishing).

Finishing has become a key differentiating element for all printed communications. 

By Patrick CAHUET, market expert and GRAPHITEC consultant