Its Norwich site now has ten press towers, which are capable of printing up to four papers and 320 different pages at the same time.

The investment, which bought in printing equipment from Guardian News and Media's (GNM) Trafford Park facility, was the reason behind the closure of the company's Ipswich plant earlier this year.

Almost all of Archant's titles, which include four dailies and 60 weeklies, have been brought in-house. An eight-hour shift can now produce more than 2m papers at full speed.

Nick Schiller, managing director at Archant print, said: "We have made significant savings with this investment. We have made material savings on ink, paper and waste. We have improved efficiency and we can now produce colour on every page. We have added 60% again to what we had here and we didn't stop the presses.

"Now we want to drive the little details through. We have the facility, we have the people and we have the contracts. We want to go from having a good, well-run facility to being a position where you can't print much better."

Archant bought a Goss line from GNM, which included an old mono line and four contemporary Goss towers that were made redundant when The Guardian moved to the Berliner format.

The Goss lines were added to Archant's existing six press towers, with the older equipment scrapped. Archant also bought the mailroom equipment from GNM, as well as buying a fourth Goss folder and two reel stands to cope with the extra capacity. Two towers were added at the end of the existing line, a second pair were "squeezed" into the middle of the existing press.