The BooXTer Duo is the new machine in the company's Fastbind range, and it is being marketed as "budget priced" with a launch price of £1,495.

It produces permanently bound books on a range of stocks including coated paper and photographic paper. Users of the machine can produce numerous styles of books for the print and photographic markets.

Ashgate claims that the machine can be used alongside fellow Fastbind machines such as the Casematic to produce personalised hard covers.

The BooXTer produces books from A5 portrait and landscape up to SRA3 (450x320mm) portrait and landscape with up to 8mm spine thickness.

According to Ashgate the machine uses a powerful stitching system featuring cassettes of 5000 staples in a cassette. The operator adds a self-adhesive end paper to each side of the book block and the spine is stitched at regular intervals.