Tony Hill, managing director at RP Printers (Birmingham), said the investment had arrived at a time when customers were demanding work to be completed even quicker than before.

He said: "We have gone beyond quick turnround to instant and when next day is not good enough you have to be able to make your plates in-house.

"We have the skills already. Our design team can just press a different button and output to the CTP device rather than the digital printer. It’s very straightforward."

The platesetter is outputting around 500 plates a month for the company's quartet of Heidelberg presses: one-, two-, four- and five-colour machines.

"In 37 years of operation, all our presses have been from Heidelberg so they did have an advantage but we had to be sure they were competitively priced and we were happy that this investment represents good value for money," added Hill.