Pricing for the press is being kept under wraps until its official unveiling, although Agfa said it would be a "considerably lower investment" compared to the M-Press Tiger, which costs between €1.3m (£1.14m) and €1.8m.

The M-Press Leopard incorporates the same inkjet shuttle technology as the Tiger, meaning it can match the Tiger for print quality and speed, and is intended for jobs that require more manual handling.

It uses a simplified feed system, with manual loading onto a Thieme 55 vacuum zoned universal print table, which features precise registration pins on both the left and the right side of the bed to make single and double-sided printing easy.

Heavy substrates up to 20 kg/sqm can be pushed towards registration pins in the back side of the table. The variable vacuum zones hold the thinnest and most flexible papers or materials completely flat so that they can easily be printed alongside rigid substrates.

The press has a maximum print size of 1.6mx2.6m and can handle substrates up to 5cm thick. It also features instant curing technology so jobs are ready to be finished as soon as they've finished printing.

Agfa Graphics PR manager Paul Adriaensen said: "It is smaller [than the Tiger] and it is manual, but it has the same high quality, same features and the same speed.

"Because it is manual input it does not feature the inline screen and the automatic loading of pages, but on the other hand you can print multiple sheets without impacting speed.

"In a western Europe industrial environment smaller and manual sounds like cheaper or lower entry, but on the other hand it has other more flexible and versatile features, so it's a little bit in between."

Adriaensen pointed out that the manual feed made double-sided printing easier than with an automated system, where all sheets would have to be printed before being fed through again to print the reverse.

Fespa Digital will be held in Hamburg, Germany from 24-27 May.