The Lancashire-based company installed a Matrix laminator, Ideal 5221 guillotine and Duplo DC-615 cutter-creaser in June.

D&L Designs decided to invest in the new equipment following a period of continuous growth and the need to automate finishing work that was being done by hand.

Director Darral Pinch said: "The Duplo crease cutter is so much faster that we’ve now got more time to do other things. To finish a typical job was taking 25 minutes but now it takes less than five. This morning we had a job where we printed 200 invites; with our finishing equipment this would have taken more than five hours but it took just half an hour from start to finish." 

The DC-615 is a pre-programmable digital finisher that cuts and creases SRA3 sheets down to finished products. It can produce 1200 greetings card or 6000 business cards per hour with no manual intervention.

D&L Designs was set up 10 years ago as a design house for publishers in the greetings card industry before expanding into print in 2008 and offering personalised cards and invitations over the internet.

It also recently installed a Konica Minolta Bizhub Pro C5501 printer.