The company has been pursuing a strategy to diversify from high volume printing to areas where individual product mark-ups are lucrative, such as in the personalised gifting market.

Managing director Michael Todd said: "You’ve got to think about how valuable these kinds of products are to consumers. A consumer won’t hesitate to pay a couple of pounds for a gift product that will be really valued by the recipient - so that’s an area we’re really concentrating on."

Todd reported that RCS’s personalised playing cards, sold for £5 a pack from the company’s dedicated site www.mypokerfaces.com, are already selling well. He said: "One example of this really taking off is with an amateur dramatics society which has had packs printed with images of all actors taking part in a certain show printed on the back. And they’ll be coming back to us for each production."

These cards, along with the calendars, gift packaging and personalised wedding and party gift packs, are printed on the firm’s Screen TruePress Jet SX, installed last November. The machine is ideal for such products, reported Todd, due to printing a B2 sheet-size which suits printing 52 playing cards at once and also suits printing party ‘stationery packs’ as one piece.

The TruePress is also ideal here, Todd added, because it can print on pre-perforated board.

RCS is also in the early stages of bringing to market Braille playing cards, produced on one of the company’s two Scodix digital embossers. RCS has already taken an order for 8,000 packs but Todd said that, though interest is high, such a new idea will take time to gain traction.

On this and the other gift formats, Todd said: "We’ve been promoting these ideas for two years but we’re only just getting through. With innovative products our strategy is to start with the big retailers and then eventually develop our own brand direct to the consumer."