Set up by Folio print directors Andy Bird and Richard Hughes, the four-person operation has been able to double the work it puts through the AB300 since installing the feeder.

“The short-run, quick turnaround boxes are proving to be a big hit,” Bristol Bespoke Boxes (BBB) managing director Andy Bird told Printweek.

“We can manufacture them on demand, so customers don’t have to store vast quantities of boxes.”

Typical runs for the firm range from 200-1,000 units. “It’s not huge quantities, but it’s the sort of area where we can manufacture them and turn them around the same day – and that’s the area where we are managing to get quite a bit of new business,” Bird said.

Customers are largely from the trade community, with printers taking up around 80% of BBB’s order books.

He added: “We also get some car parts [manufacturers] and wholesale businesses, where they’re buying stuff in bulk and then shipping them out in bespoke cartons in smaller quantities. We design the box for them so it can fit all sorts of obscure products.”

The new feeder’s doubling of productivity – “we can now print cartons as fast as we can glue them” – will help BBB realise further growth ambitions, Bird said.

Next on the list for the £150,000 business, which hopes to turn over £250,000 by the end of next year, will be a print unit for the boxmaker, and then a multicut add-on, within the next year and a half.

“As a start-up business, it’s done very well,” Bird said.

“It’s grown organically, and there’s room for more. A lot of companies will need better boxes too with upcoming packaging legislation, so we’re finding a lot of companies turning to bespoke products.”