Managing director Greg Smith said that for the past six months Cats had produced over 1m colour copies a month on its two 6060s, but with the new contracts one a university and the other a City-based company he expected to output an extra 500,000 copies a month.

The new machine was also essential due to the increasing demand of Copyshophub.com, which Smith launched in May as a digital "cash and carry" aimed solely at copy shops.

"The Hub is going mad. Weve just had a colour job in for 15,000 and weve been talking to a couple of franchises about possible projects," said Smith.

Cats is also looking into the possibility of a NexPress or iGen3, but will only get the technology thats right for its clients at the time, according to Smith.