According to the company, the machine has been designed with fast changeovers in mind and features tool-less changeovers Dermot Callaghan, sales manager bindery products, said that he could train anyone to run the machine in half an hour.

"We recognise that the skills that existed in the finishing department are no longer there. It’s a shame, but the machine has been designed to be very easy to use," he said.

The £19,995 machine runs at 800 books an hour in thicknesses from 6.9mm to 32mm. It can handle books up to 360mm wide and was designed to sit under the Mobi 500, which boasts a 500mm-wide format.

He said: "We recognise that the digital market is all about A4 and A5. We sold 16 Mobi 500 machines in the UK last year and about 95% of them would have gone for a Mobi 360 because they didn’t need the extra width."

Meanwhile, the company also secured the sale of an AP360 high-speed punch to Ace Binding yesterday. The £35,000 show spend followed the Birmingham-based company’s installation of a Mobi 500 wire binder, an APSI coil inserter and a P500 desktop punch. The firm said the spend allowed it to handle all book and calendar work.

The AP360 can punch at 80,000 sheets an hour and managing director Rob Hart believes that it will up capacity by three or four times and ensure that punching is never again a bottleneck.