The Derbyshire-based magazine printer took out the oldest of its six KBA long perfectors on 30 June and then had four days to prepare the pitch for the arrival of its first XL 106.

Bernard Galloway, chairman of Buxton Press, said: "It's a precision machine and Heidelberg delivered and installed it bang on programme - we should be up and running on it by the end of July."

Buxton's four different press shifts have been training on the XL 106 at Heidelberg UK's national showroom in Brentford and are now eager to get into full production on the new machine in Buxton's palace road print works.

"The average age on the shopfloor is under 33 and all four supervisors are under 30 and have come through our internal training course and that helps gives a vitality and an excitement to the place," said Galloway.

The new machine is the first of two XL 106s, both eight-colour perfectors with CutStar reel sheeters, Inpress Control and fully automated simultaneous plate changing, that made up Buxton's £7m Drupa press spend.

Buxton will install the second of the two machines in the next quiet window in the publishing calendar, at the beginning of January, and its intention is to install a new press every year until has replaced all of its old long perfectors by 2018.

Galloway said that the aim of the £20m upgrade plan was to get the maximum throughput from the printer's building as it bids to grow its turnover from £18m to £30m.

The higher speed and capacity of the new presses will allow Buxton to attack the lower end of the web offset market; Buxton has estimated that the capacity of its new XL 106 is 108% greater than that of the nine-year-old KBA press it has replaced.

"We are a quality, commodity printer and with these new very high velocity, high capacity machines coming in the challenge for us is to keep that velocity fed - we want to get the maximum velocity coming out per square foot," added Galloway.

Meanwhile, Buxton has already completed a re-equip of its bindery, after installing four Friedheim MBO K800 folders with Palamides Alpha 700plus stackers to replace its eight single-pass Stahl folders.

Next on the cards will be a third platesetter, needed to increase platemaking capacity to match the demand of the second XL 106 when that is installed in January.