The order was placed on Friday (12 July) and it will take three months for CMC to build the machine at its factory in Italy. It is expected to be delivered to CMS’ 4,300sqm premises in Birmingham in October.

The investment introduces paper wrapping services to the direct mail outfit’s portfolio of services, with an eye on the environmental benefits of switching clients onto paper wraps over polywrap.

Managing director Mitesh Chouhan said: “This is new territory for CMS driven by client demand. The clients that have requested paper wrapping have done so due to environmental concerns, but I do still feel there is a good market for polywrapping.

“We will be looking to offer paper wrapping to both our trade and end clients. Trade clients are approximately 30% of our business and growing. We will be able to offer a very competitive paper wrapping pack price and we are interested in work of all volumes.

“This year we are looking to sustainably continue our growth by taking on a mixture of work.”

The CMC One, built to spec for CMS, is capable of 20,000 packs/hr with an ability to cope with varying pack sizes from 100x120mm up to 300x420mm and up to 30mm thick, 10mm thicker than the standard One.

It will run an inline inkjetting for personalisation, as well as bulk loader, shuttle feeder, rotary feeders, stream feeder, five-way camera match, rotary cutter and extraction, an unwinder for 1.2m reels and a Mailsort kicker.

Chouhan said the wrapper would give CMS the ability to enclose up to 10 inserts in A5 packs and up to six in C4+ packs, while the CMC One would also be configured with 18,000 packs/hr polywrapping capabilities with a 25-minute switchover time.

With a headcount of 75 members of staff, CMS’ turnover currently stands at £10m. It runs 10 Xerox production presses, including an 800 and a Nuvera 144 installed in February, as well as five inkjet printers, five envelope enclosers and five polywrap machines.