The Aldershot-based company said that Xerox had taken a number of labour-intensive tasks and automated them within the iGen engine.

Dean Larkham, group production director, said: "Usually, an operator will spend quite a bit of time getting the colour right between one job and another… and you can have a period of up to an hour before you start the job.

"With the iGen4, you can literally put jobs in a queue with the confidence that the job will come out great the other end."

He added that financially there was very little difference in the machines the company evaluated, but said that the Xerox machines were reliable and consistent.

Ian Savage, iQLaserpress group sales director, said: "You have to be both proactive and reactive in this market.

"So many companies are just simply reacting to what the market wants, where we are continually looking for the next big thing that will take the business to another level, and the iGen 4 is a big part of this strategy."

The new machines joins an iGen3, Nuvera 288, Nuvera 120 and 100, DC4110, two DC5252s and a DC250, all of which were supplied by Xeretec Office Systems.

The company was unavailable to comment further.