The Chessington-based outfit took the four-colour machine at the beginning of the month, installing it in place of a 15-year-old, six-colour Heidelberg Speedmaster SM 74.

Direct Colour director Mark Attwater said that the investment had been initiated in an attempt to keep his £1.2m-turnover outfit “as competitive as possible”.

“The problem with our non-H-UV presses is that the time it takes to move paper from packet to finishing is increasingly long and particularly with the amount of people that want to use uncoated materials,” said Attwater.

“We are not looking to get into high-end design but a lot of customers specify papers that don’t dry quickly, so there is lots of time waiting to move it and it 'sets off' if not careful, even with fast-drying inks. 

“We had to try and get more efficient. The Heidelberg wasn’t fast enough; the technology was old. We looked at the market at a secondhand faster Heidelberg but didn’t fancy buying something with the same technology just 10 years newer because we weren’t really going to get any benefit from that.” 

The Lithrone runs at maximum speeds of 16,500sph, taking sheets at a maximum size of 530x750mm. Komori says it achieves the “world’s shortest makeready”, due to its fully automatic platechanging system, able to change four plates in two-and-a-half minutes. It also has automatic washup of blanket, impression cylinders and ink rollers.

Attwater added: “It’s a very hands-off system. The minder can concentrate on what the job looks like rather than the job itself. At 16,500sph, jobs don’t necessarily need to be fine art quality but need to be produced well and quickly, on the Heidelberg we were producing well but slowly.”

Twelve-staff Direct Colour also runs in-house finishing equipment. It also has an in-house design agency. 

“I have tried to take the business away from a traditional litho platform and make it more of a hybrid,” added Attwater.