The firm, which is based in Crewe, Cheshire, bought the £45,000 press from Dukinfield-based Afinia Label dealer Magnum Materials.

The DLP-2000 has a RotoMetrics cylinder, which accepts flexible dies up to 300mm long (12in), is powered by Memjet technology.

The device prints at a resolution of 1,600dpi for "photographic quality colour" at 9m/min, including inline lamination, and is aimed at companies looking for cost-effective printing on short runs and prototyping. It was installed two months ago.

The investment has enabled Active Brand Concepts to bring much of its short-run and some of its longer-run work in-house. The firm will continue to outsource some of its much higher volume runs to a flexographic printer.

Active Brand Concepts director Joel Walker said: “This press has massively reduced our order of litho labels. The biggest things for us are control, as we can change anything from run to run or even from label to label, and the fact that we only have to run the labels we need.

“We can now print 180 or 200 labels for a customer if necessary, which reduces our stockholding and in turn reduces costs as we haven’t got money sat on the shelf.”

The company also operates five Domino V100 thermal transfer printers and a Zebra barcode printer.

“We’d been looking into how we could do digital for a while but it’s only very recently that it’s become so cost-effective,” said Walker.

“This is a great little machine that gives us much more flexibility. Another good thing about it is that we can send samples to customers as a finished product.”

Active Brand Concepts, which employs around 50 staff, specialises in developing, manufacturing and supplying chemical cleaning products. The company serves customers ranging from major supermarkets to discount chains and independent retailers.