The firm has bought an “all-singing, all-dancing” £130,000 model including creasing, cutting, perforating and slitting to help it automate finishing tasks in its digital division.

“It combines three or four pieces of kit we already use into one, and will help us be more automated and slicker when finishing high-value short-run digital jobs,” said ProCo managing director Jon Bailey.

“It’s not about losing people, though,” he added. “We will be keeping the skillset. It’s about being more efficient. And we can start utilising our presses in different ways.”

The firm will use the DC-745 to finish a wide variety of jobs coming off its three HP Indigo presses, such as short-run business cards, voucher sets and postcards.

“The barcode technology means we can stack jobs in the machine and away it goes,” Bailey added. “It takes 15-20 minutes out of doing each process, and when you’re doing 300 jobs a day and add that up you really start to see the benefits.”

The DC-745 will be installed at ProCo’s 4,830sqm factory within the next month.

ProCo also offers sheetfed litho, direct mail and enclosing among its range of print and cross-media services to marketers. The company employs around 100 staff and Bailey expects turnover of circa £11m this year.