The mono and colour digital printing company in Plymouth said the press printed at up to 80ppm and could easily handle monthly volumes of 500,000 prints.

It was one of three new purchases, totaling £125,000, made this year and runs alongside two Konica Minolta 1250 mono production machines producing 125 A4 ppm or 70 A3 ppm.

Pepper Communications also considered kit from Canon and Ricoh but was sold on the bizhub’s reliability, quality and "solid stability", according to production director Jake Whitford.

The new machines replaced a Konica Minolta 6500 and two 1050 machines at the 35-staff, £4.5m-turnover business. The printer also runs two Heidelberg Speedmasters: an XL 105 and an SM 52.

"Our new digital suite produces unbelievable, high-quality digital printing on stock up to a premium heavyweight grade of 350gsm. Back-up and service are really good," said Whitford.

"Quality is paramount and most of our customers would find it hard to tell the difference between the work produced on our new digital colour engine and that from the litho presses.

"Pretty fancy gizmos, such as an inline spectrophotometer, suction feed and updated registration system using Fogra, mean print jobs are guaranteed to look great," he added.

Personalisation, customisation and integration capabilities are handled by Darwin software, which also enables his team to link directly to external databases for mailing campaigns.

Whitford said return on investment was good thanks to kit that was solidly built and produced consistent high quality.