The Exeter-based company has also installed a Wohlenberg 115 high-speed guillotine and a host of complementary Baumann handling equipment, including a jogger, pile hoist and re-stacker, from Friedheim.

Larkbeare's KM600 features a 20-station gatherer and HD143 trimmer and cooling tower. The machine runs at 7,000 books an hour and will prepare work for the company's substantial wire-o and spiral binding workload.

Managing director Neil Oakley expects the machine to be installed at the end of May, with production up and running by the middle of June

Oakley joked: "It is costing more than my car but less than my house. We have bought the binder to enable us to supply customers with PUR-bound products.

"It will massively reduce our makeready times and easily double our perfect-binding capacity. Profitability will be improved via increased efficiency and higher machine loadings."

He added that customers have been asking Larkbeare to provide a PUR service, but the machine carries added benefits because the company will now be able to bind products that it couldn't produce before because of size limitations, and the lack of PUR.

The Wohlenberg guillotine will replace two existing guillotines and will handle loose leaf work.