The company has bought a Sitma SR11 stacker that will be fitted to one of four SM15 paper-enclosing lines, as part of a spend totalling £100,000.

"This is an efficiency-based purchase to improve throughput and semi-automate the handling of packs and the back end," said managing director of print services, Lance Hill.

"Work at the back end can be very labour intensive and this kit could potentially save the labour of one or two people. If it's successful, we will probably look to invest in another one."

The second Ipex buy was a Lake Image 2 camera-matching system for the firm's Herzog & Heymann card-attaching line at its base in Kettering, Northamptonshire.

This will use barcode and data-matrix-integrity software to match personalised cards with personalised letters or carriers.

"The camera system is for business we've won for membership cards for a mail-order company. We are also looking at welcome packs for a publisher that requires the matching of cards."

Hill, who used Ipex to look at Watkiss and Horizon collators, said: "The two items we bought were on the radar before the event but it was good to do the deal while we were at the show.

"Despite all the recent industry gloom and doom, it's quite nice to be looking forward more positively."

Last month, 4DM notched up an ISO data-security standard to nudge it further into transactional mailing, for which Hill said the company was already "quite a reasonable player in that field".