The litho print firm will take delivery of the new machine at the end of the month when it will be housed in the pre-press department and operate on a 6am to 2pm and 2pm to 10pm shift system, five days per week.

Part of a £150,000 investment, the digital press will enable the company to offer short run and variable data work for new and existing clients.

Managing director Louis Bracey said that the decision to invest in digital was the result of a combination of factors. He explained: "We have a local government contract to supply litho work and when it came up for renewal we decided to bid for digital work as well and we won it.

"We are well established in the conventional sheet fed offset litho market but we are seeing a growing market for digital with people asking for smaller and smaller quantities of print and with quality getting better we felt now was the time to invest. We must be able to supply a competitive range of range of work."

Bracey said he anticipated that promoting their digital capacity would also prompt more litho work.

Included in the overall investment will be a raft of new finishing equipment about which the company is currently in negotiations.

Bracey said: "We didn’t want to use our existing large capacity finishing equipment with the shorter-run output from the Linotype so we decided to invest in a number of additional machines to meet that need.

Bracey intends to recruit a new member of staff once the Linotype is fully operational and anticipates seeing a return on investment within three months."

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