The five-colour machine, which replaces a Xeikon 330 press, outputs at 9.6m per minute and offers a range of anti-counterfeiting features as well as the ability to print white onto transparent materials for a 'no label' effect.

The company also offers screen and flexo production, although the shift to digital has seen its arsenal of six flexo machines reduced to one.

Managing director Simon Smith said that digital has "taken over as our main production system".

He said that the quality and sophistication of digital labels was having a tangible benefit both for his business and his clients. "We used to produce a simple two-colour flexo label for one customer. Having managed to up-sell him to a more imaginative and more attractive four-colour digitally printed label, his product sales have increased four-fold. Same product, same basic packaging, but a different and more appealing label."

Smith added that the Xeikon machines had also won back screen work that had been lost to a Chinese rival, in part because of the better quality of digital, faster turnaround, as well as the wide range of substrates the machines can work with such as self-adhesive stock, foils and paperboard.

The Wolverhampton-based company and the digital press manufacturer chose to celebrate the installation of the printer's fourth Xeikon with a cake, in the form of the new press.