It's always nice to have a cheery end to the week, and it comes in the shape of the story in today's issue of PrintWeek about Lettershop Group and its use of high-speed colour inkjet.

It was my privilege to be among the delegation that visited Leeds to learn about a project that has involved two years' worth of legwork by the company, and a seven-figure investment.

I love the fact that these home-grown experts in innovation and engineering have taken Kodak's Stream colour inkjet heads and created something that is arguably cleverer than what Kodak itself has achieved thus far with Stream technology. Not least the fact that Lettershop can print onto a wide range of standard offset paper grades, something that's essential for the firm's model involving sophisticated, but affordable, colour personalisation to work.

A 4.25 inch print width might not sound much, but once you realise the vast array of variable image options it allows them to conjure up, in combination with litho pre-print and their magical origami-like offline finishing lines, then the potential really is incredible.

The Lettershop system is the sort of thing that one might imagine coming out of the R&D department at an industry giant like an RR Donnelley, or a Quad/Graphics. That it's been developed by an independent UK printing business makes it worthy of an extra-special hoorah in my book. Well done chaps.