The stitcher offers fully automatic set-up and produces items such as luxury sales brochures, catalogues and instruction manuals.

It cost £130,000 and replaced a Duplo 5000 machine. Managing director Gavin Savage said: “The iSaddle gives us more control of work we no longer need to send out, saving us £5,000 a month.

“This includes A4 landscape litho work from eight to 40 pages in runs of between 100 to 500. It's a one-man operation machine, it is perfect for what we do and the quality is very, very good.

“We didn't really look at other kit. We've been with Duplo for 10 years for stitching and creasing kit and have always found their service very good.

“We focus heavily on short-run digital or litho work, but we also do long-run magazine jobs. Previously we've farmed that work out but this new machine is more than capable of handling it.”

The iSaddle offers quick job changeover for less downtime, according to Duplo. Maximum sheet size is 356x508mm with a minimum of 105x210mm or 174x254mm for landscape format.

Doveton Press, a 32-staff company founded in 1969, turns over £3m from its base in Bristol. It runs two B3 Heidelberg Anicolor machines, four- and five-colour models, and a B2 Heidelberg Speedmaster SM 74.

Savage said the latter was due to be replaced with a Heidelberg XL in about eight weeks to make the company's B2 firepower more productive. The factory is also being extended.

Doveton Press has spent £1.3m in the past 12 months on expansion and is also looking at replacing two Ricoh Pro C901 machines with newer models offering more colours including white ink.