Speaking at Interquest's Digital Book Printing Conference, held in London yesterday, CPI's chief technology officer Bernard Kieffer said the group had "understood very quickly" the necessity to transform its fixed costs in the face of decreasing run lengths.

The firm installed Europe's first HP T300 inkjet web, complete with integrated binding line, last autumn and the kit went fully live two months ago.

"We are convinced now by the concept and will probably buy 10 machines over the next five years," Kieffer stated.

However, he emphasised that even with such an expansion of its digital printing facilities, digital production would still make up a relatively small percentage of the 600m books a year currently produced across its 16 European plants.

At the end of last month CPI expanded its print-on-demand firepower with the acquisition of German firm Buch Bücher.de.

During the conference Interquest shared research about key trends in digital book printing, including a survey of the biggest book printing companies in the USA that showed the top three trends to be shorter runs and better inventory management, closely followed by growth in digital colour.

"We believe digital book printing is one of the best opportunities for print," said Interquest president Gilles Biscos, who predicted rapid growth in colour and said the impact of ebooks would be limited in the short-term.