According to joint owner Lee Masters, the Greenwich-based company installed the machine in order to "get a better control" of costs.

He said: "With a £20,000 job we were spending £10,000 on paper and £4,000 to £5,000 on finishing. That wasn’t really leaving us with very much and yet we were taking all the risk. A lot of work is turned around in under 24 hours for the banking sector so we needed to be more flexible."

Thanks to the investment, Aspect Press was able to bring its finishing work in house, as well as better evaluate costs. Masters also said that rush jobs could be accepted, rather than turned away, as the fast changeover on the machines made stopping longer runs possible.

The 500 has an icon-based colour touchscreen, which aids automated set-up – according to IFS this can be achieved in less than two minutes. The machine runs at speeds of up to 5,500bph, which can be more than doubled to 11,000bph in two-up mode.

An added bonus of the machine has been the environmental side effects of not sending work out to be completed.

Masters said: "We are ISO140001 compliant at the moment and we are hoping to achieve the accreditation by the end of the year. Running more environmentally responsibly will certainly help us in our goal."

Established 18 years ago, Aspect Press runs a five-colour B2 SpeedMaster 74 and a five-colour B3 Speedmaster 52. It currently has 18 employees.