The council in-plant, which employs 13 staff, added a Canon imagePRESS in late 2011, to support its Xerox 250.

At the time it was also running an 18-year-old Horizon line, which was put under pressure by the additional print capacity.

Design and print manager Mike Bennett said: "It was time to upgrade. Set-up is much shorter making us more productive. It is a giant leap from what we had. It eats up work. It is much quicker and faster, producing a high-quality finished product."

As well as the digital work, the booklet-making line completes jobs from the department’s four-colour Ryobi, single-colour Heidelberg GTO and a two-colour Heidelberg QuickMaster.

The 4,500bph machine features a 200-programme job memory storage and is equipped with a 10-station VAC-Turbo 1000 PowerCollator.