The £193m-turnover plc commissioned a second HP T300 high-speed inkjet press at its Leeds facility earlier this year. It is also planning to invest in wider T400 models for its Speke statementing facility as part of a group-wide plan to create 'document factories' that are automated and integrated.

Dave Rushton, managing director of specialist production and sourcing, said the group printed 6bn A4 pages a year, of which 10-15% is currently full-colour digital. "The challenge is to migrate our customer base to digital technology over the next five to six years, and to do that incrementally without overwhelming people," he said.

The firm has grown its digital capabilities from small beginnings with a single HP Indigo sheetfed press, through to a multimillion-pound investment in the T300s and associated server capability to handle the mammoth amount of data processing involved in high-speed personalised print.

"This business is all about scale, whether that's email traffic or print, you've got to have scale. So when we decide to do something we don't mess about," Rushton explained.

"There are high barriers to entry – people can't just enter this market. We had 18 months of pain as an early adopter, but we've got an 18-month lead on the market."

Through its Data Intelligence wing, Communisis also consolidates more than 20 different sources of data every month. "We have 80m assets, including current and previous addresses," stated analysis director Paul Birks. "We are now in a position to deliver the most comprehensive data solutions in the business."