The £5.5m-turnover 44-staff company, which developed from a pre-press background, achieved the certification using its 12-colour Heidelberg Speedmaster XL perfector.

The Speedmaster XL 105-12-P features Autoplate XL plate loading and Inpress control for fully automatic colour register control.

Matthew Trounce, managing director at EPC Direct, said: "By its very nature, perfecting, with the need to achieve optimum colour match on both sides of a sheet, is more challenging than straight printing.

"But the colour control is so precise on the XL 105 with Inpress Control, and with all of the latest workflow connectivity we have the certification process was relatively painless."

The addition of Inpress control is latest colour development at EPC, which has previously adopted spectrophotometric measurement, initially with CPC 21 then CPC 24 for lab-colour measurement.

"It is easy to look at ISO 12647 and see what you should achieve but the advantage Heidelberg offers is that it can apply the standard in a practical way in a commercial environment," added Trounce.

In July last year, Hampton Printing became the first UK print company to achieve the ISO 12647-2 colour control standard via Heidelberg UK's accreditation scheme.