The Maidstone-based company purchased the printer for around £63,000 and will install it in December. It replaces a three-year-old Ricoh Pro C651, which Black Lion initially had on a five-year deal.

Managing director Mark Stokes said: “We quite often see the guys from Ricoh and some of the reps came and said to me, ‘Look we’ve got this new bit of kit out.’ I was very impressed with the machine, especially the fact it has moved on to the clear and the white so for us it is a little bit different from just printing CMYK.

“We do quite a lot of charity sector work and sometimes we are pushed out by the fact that clients ask, for example, for a booklet on 380gsm Fedrigoni dark blue board, which means we can’t do the job. There are certain things I feel we’ve been closed out on but I feel this is a bit of a new opening in the market for us.”

Black Lion, which was an all-Xerox printing house from 2000 to 2013, also runs a 2015-purchased HP Latex 360.

The Ricoh’s fifth colour station offers clear gloss and white toner, features not offered by the C7100.

It prints at maximum speeds of up to 90ppm at a maximum resolution of 1,200x4,800dpi. It also offers support for textured media, envelopes, cling film and transparent media, taking a maximum sheet size at a width of 700mm.

“We’ve noticed a real trend in the last six months in the way quantities on jobs have gone down,” added Stokes.

“With this machine in mind, we still need to keep the litho but we’re finding so much more work is crossing over to the digital market simply because of quantities. Unless it’s a mailing, jobs tend to be around 1,000 sheets.”

Black Lion also runs two litho machines, a two-colour Heidelberg Speedmaster SM 52 and a five-colour GTO. It runs a Matrix laminator, Duplo bookletmaker and Morgana DigiCreaser in its finishing department.

The nine-staff company has a turnover of just less than £500,000.