The two mystery machines, installed in mid-August, are capable of reading barcodes, QR-codes, and scanning text and images, helping the business meet the increasingly complex needs of pharmaceutical printers.

CPF operations director Alan Pickles told Printweek: “It’s vital that the right leaflet goes with the right product, that it’s not missing any text, and that the text has no errors.

“We’ve seen the evolution of pharmaceutical coding, from barcode to QR-code, and down the line, pharmaceutical coding will change even further. We just want to be prepared for that.

“If necessary, we can now match a piece of text as well as a pharmaceutical company [can]. It’s fairly common in direct mail, but for pharmaceutical leaflet production, it’s going to become a necessity.

Keeping the manufacturer under wraps for now, CPF wants to prove the technology thoroughly before going public with the new technology’s exact specifications. 

The firm, which splits its business roughly halfway between specialist pharmaceutical finishing work and more general trade finishing jobs, sees work come in from all over the country, with hundreds of customers sending overflow or difficult jobs to CPF’s Leicester site.

“A lot of our machines are very specialist,” explained Pickles.

“A medium-sized printer might have two or three miniature folding jobs a year, and it doesn’t want to invest [in the kit] to fold them, of course.”

Despite difficult trading conditions, the firm has managed to keep business running well.

“There are far fewer printers than there used to be, but the stronger companies, the ones who are using good practices and innovating, will survive. 

“We try and do things that others can’t, including working within the PS 9000 [pharmaceutical documentation] standard. We get audited on a regular basis, and we’ve got those processes and procedures in place.”

CPF employs 31, turning over around £1.5m annually from a fleet of 55 machines.