The Ultra digitally coats B2 sheets from 120-350gsm and runs at between 10-40 m/min.

According to Pensord operations director Karl Gater, the new machine will allow the Pontllanfraith, Wales-based company to cut its turnarounds on short-run magazine covers by bringing its coating in-house.

He added that Pensord had run exhaustive tests on the Ultra, which is not widely used for magazine work.

He said: "We couldn't really spend a lot of money on a big machine because it would be stood still half the time. The Ultra really suits us and it will help with turnaround time. Environmentally our footprint will be bigger because everything will be in-house, but overall it will drop because we won't be transporting as much.

"The other advantage is that it means we have a coater for digitally printed sheets. We don't have any digital at the moment, but if we choose to make that move we already have something that can deal with the sheet size."