Pacific Bindery Services is a trade bindery. A trade bindery is a company whose function it is to serve the post-press needs of the printing industry. It customarily provides specialized services such as saddle stitching, perfect binding, cutting, folding, mechanical binding (of various types), perforating, scoring, punching, drilling, a large variety of hand operations, etc. Many printers are equipped to do some bindery or finishing work themselves but no local printers are equipped to do all of the bindery/finishing work. Printers send work out to trade binderies because:

• Trade binderies have a larger variety of equipment and are capable of doing a larger variety of binding and finishing services;
• Trade binderies employ skilled staff that are focused on bindery and finishing as their core services (whereas printers focus on their core service – printing) – trade binderies are specialists rather than generalists and provide niche services;
• As trade binderies often have more than one piece of equipment (i.e. more than one stitcher or one folder or one perfect binder) they can be very responsive and provide fast turnarounds to printers;
• Often trade binderies have higher quality finishing equipment that is technologically advanced and is justified by high usage through the equipment.

All printing companies have a bindery department. This is where finishing operations are performed on printed paper after it comes from the press. In some cases a printer’s bindery consists of just a cutter and a place to count and wrap up jobs. Some printing plants have binderies larger than many trade binderies. However, no printer can justify the purchase of equipment (or the required trained operators for that matter) that will only be used occasionally, so it becomes necessary to subcontract some of this work out.